Boko Haram: African diplomats vow to support Nigeria

The African Diplomatic Group has condemned the terror attacks carried out by the Boko Haram sect in parts of the country.

The diplomats also called on the Federal Government to expedite action for the rescue or release of the abducted Chibok school girls even as they commiserated with the government of Nigeria, the families of the kidnapped girls and other victims of the terrorists’ attacks.

The ambassador of Shaharawi Arab Republic to Nigeria and Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, Oubi Bachir said this on Friday during the Africa and Mandela Day celebrations in Abuja.

Bachir said, “The Africa Diplomatic Group condemns all threats to the progress of Africa, including Boko Haram terror attacks that have taken the lives of hundreds of innocent Nigerians, and families of the victims for loss of their loved ones.

“The group calls for the unconditional release of the over 200 girls, who were kidnapped in chibok, Borno State, on April 14, 2014.

“Africa is committed to garner all the necessary resources to support Nigeria in its quest to combat terrorism.”

The envoy noted that Africa had come a long way since the formation of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963, which later changed to African Union in 2002, adding that the continent, despite its challenges had made tremendous strides in peace and development.

He said the United Nations General Assembly on July 18, 2009 launched Nelson Mandela International Day in recognition of the birth anniversary of the iconic late President of the Republic of South Africa for his immense contribution to the liberation of his country and humanity in general.

The High Commissioner of South Africa to Nigeria, Lulu Mnguni, who paid tributes to Mandela, called on all well-meaning individuals to emulate the iconic virtues of the late former South African president.

In his remarks, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Amb. Bulus Lolo called on Africa to unite and collaborate in the fight against terror and insurgency.

Culled from: Punch News

JAMB backs down, says candidates can write post-UTME in their first choice institutions

The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board on Wednesday said candidates are allowed to do the post-UTME in their first choice institutions.

JAMB’s Public Relations officer, Fabian Benjamin, said in a statement that candidates can do the post-UTME exercise in the institutions, particularly universities to which they were posted by JAMB.

“Following the various public opinions, we have taken two approaches to ease the problems of our candidates,” Mr. Benjamin said.

The universities will soon get the soft copies of the list of candidates that applied to various institutions as first choice.

“We hope this will help the candidates in their endeavour,” Mr. Benjamin said.

He said the voice of the people is the voice of God, adding that this action would go a long way to show that the Board is a responsive organisation which has concern over the feeling of Nigerians.

“The Board will not relent in its efforts to see that our education is one of the best in the world,” said Mr. Benjamin.

Controversial New Policy

Earlier on, at a combined policy meeting, JAMB announced the adoption of a policy where applicants are reassigned to other universities with lower number of candidates.

The JAMB Registrar, Dibu Ojerinde, explained that the benefit of the new policy would help needy universities with lower number of candidates.

Mr. Ojerinde said the policy would also assist JAMB candidates have better chances of admission in universities they are reassigned to.

http://www.premiumtimesng.com/

Children and mentally ill lead new wave of suspected Boko Haram suicide bombers

By Peter Foster, telegraph.co.uk

A 12-year-old girl and a “mentally handicapped” woman were among those who carried a weekend wave of suicide bombings by suspected Islamic militants in northern Nigeria and Cameroon that left more than 60 people dead and hundreds fleeing their homes.

The attacks were widely blamed on Boko Haram, the Islamic State-affiliated terror group that has carried out widespread atrocities in the region since 2009.

The most recent bombing came on Sunday morning in a crowded market in north-eastern Nigerian town of Damaturu when a “mentally handicapped” bomber struck, killing 15 and injuring 47 others.

That attack came just hours after a 12-year-old girl killed 20 people in a Saturday night attack on a bar in the Cameroonian city of Maroua, a commercial hub of the extreme north of Cameroon close to the Nigerian and Chadian borders.

It came a day after Boko Haram were blamed for a series of attacks on villages across the border in north-eastern Nigeria that left at least 25 dead and forced hundreds more to flee their burning homes.

Over the past two years Boko Haram fighters have carried out several cross-border raids and abductions in northern Cameroon but the country, which is engaged in a regional fightback against the jihadists, had previously been spared from suicide attacks.

A new, five-nation force – from Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Benin – is due to deploy by July 30 to take on the militants, whose six-year insurgency has left at least 15,000 dead and increasingly threatens regional security.

Earlier this month the new Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari visited Washington and received pledges for greater US assistance, however the US continues to refuse to provide arms shipments to Nigeria citing its poor record on corruption and human rights.

Mr Buhari recently criticised that decision as tantamount to “aiding and abetting” the terrorists, but is under mounting pressure to tackle the militants after a fresh outbreak of violence left 800 people dead since he came to power in May.

But despite repeated promises from Nigerian leaders that the militants would be crushed, the attacks keep coming on both sides of the Nigerian-Cameroon border.

Last Wednesday 13 people were killed in twin bombings in Maroua carried out by two girls said to be "under 15" years of age. That assault was the second of its kind in the area in the past 10 days.

Meanwhile Damaturu, the capital of Nigeria’s Yobe state that has been worst-hit by Boko Haram, was the scene of a triple suicide bombing on July 18 when three girls blew themselves up killing at least 13 people as residents prepared for the Eid festival marking the end of Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Bobbi Kristina Brown Dies at 22

Bobbi Kristina Brown, 22, the only daughter of singers Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, died Sunday, nearly six months after she was found unresponsive in a bathtub of her home, her family said.

Brown has been unresponsive in hospitals and hospice care since she was found in her Roswell, Georgia, home on Jan. 31. Her family said she suffered irreversible brain damage.

"She is finally at peace in the arms of God," her family told NBC News in a statement. "We want to again thank everyone for their tremendous amount of love and support during these last few months."

Bobbi Kristina was music royalty as the daughter of two superstars — and the granddaughter of another, Cissy Houston, the mother of Whitney, who died in February 2012.

Police have said that they investigated the case as a medical emergency and that no foul play is suspected. No criminal charges have ever been brought.She became even better known at age 10 when she was featured on her father's reality TV series, "Being Bobby Brown."

But late last month, Brown's conservator sued Nick Gordon — who has been described as Brown's boyfriend and husband, an attachment her family denies — for $10 million, accusing him of having physically abused Brown and having improperly withdrawn $11,000 from her bank account after she was in a coma.

Whitney Houston brought Gordon into her household as an orphan at the age of 12, raising him with her daughter after divorcing Bobby Brown in 2007. Gordon wore a large tattoo of Houston's face on his arm and called the singer "mom," but she never adopted him or included him in her will.

http://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/bobbi-kristina-brown-dies-22-family-confirms-n398756

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Because it matters...Be inspired!!!: How David Mark doubled National Assembly budget

Because it matters...Be inspired!!!: How David Mark doubled National Assembly budget: By the time the curtain fell on the 7th session of Nigeria’s National Assembly in June, one of the most prominent characters of that era, w...

How David Mark doubled National Assembly budget

By the time the curtain fell on the 7th session of Nigeria’s National Assembly in June, one of the most prominent characters of that era, who retreated backstage as a member of the 8th session (after his party became a minority), is former Senate President, David Mark.

Mr. Mark, a retired army general, would be remembered for his ignoble role in deepening and institutionalising the culture of secrecy at Nigeria’s federal legislative body.

In 2003, total National Assembly budget was about N23.347 billion.

The next year, the figure rose to about N32.229 billion (2004) and then N55.422 billion in 2005.

Although the figure dropped to N39.810 billion in 2006, the allocations have remained on the upswing ever after.

Immediately Mr. Mark became Senate President in 2007, the National Assembly’s budget rose from N66.488 billion to a shocking N104.825 billion in 2008, before dropping marginally to N96.052 billion in 2009.

By 2010, while he was still in charge, the allocation had a geometric jump, skyrocketing to unprecedented levels to a peak of about N154.2 billion.

With the Nigerian public increasingly scrutinizing the spiraling annual allocations to the National Assembly, questions about why the lawmakers got so much, amid rising overheads in the national budget, became inevitable.

To block Nigerians from knowing details of how the National Assembly’s jumbo allocations are spent, and how much lawmaker’s earn in allowances, Mr. Mark’s leadership wrapped up the federal legislator’s finances in utmost secrecy.

In one master stroke of legislative brinkmanship, the National Assembly budget, hitherto open to public scrutiny, like those of all ministries, departments and agencies, suddenly became secret.

Details of the allocation were never made known, and Mr. Mark and his team resisted all efforts to pry it open.

By 2010, the National Assembly legislated to make itself member of an exclusive club of agencies whose budget details are never disclosed but whose finances are deducted en-bloc (first-line charge) via statutory transfers.

This group includes the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the National Judicial Council (NJC), the Niger-Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and the Public Complaints Commission (PCC).

Agencies in this group receive their annual budgetary allocations in bulk without providing breakdown of expenditure details.

Under Mr. Mark’s leadership, details of the National Assembly’s N150 billion allocations remained secret, despite public outcry against it.

For the first time in several years, the federal lawmakers agreed to cut their jumbo allocation by 23.3 percent to N115 billion in 2015.

Yet, details of how the fund would be spent remained secret.

Disturbed by the trend, the Lead Director, Centre for Social Justice (CENSOJ), Eze Onyekpere, citing the Freedom of Information Act and Section 48 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, demanded budgetary and expenditure details from both the National Assembly and the Federal Ministry of Finance.

When Mr. Mark failed to grant the request, Mr. Onyekpere went to court.

After several adjournments, the court, on February 25, 2014, ordered the Minister of Finance to oblige the civil society group with details of all statutory transfers.

But Mr. Mark and the finance ministry ignored the order.

The closest anyone got to knowing how lawmakers spend Nigeria’s hard-earned money was the indication given by Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and current Emir of Kano, Lamido Sanusi.

Mr. Sanusi had said expenses by the National Assembly accounted for about 25 percent of the total overhead cost by the federal government.

Apart from allocations for salaries and allowances, Mr. Sanusi said all other items packed under different sub-heads in the appropriation bill consist mainly of expenses on the personal benefits of lawmakers.

According to the former CBN boss, the National Assembly under Mr. Mark perfected a curious system of “retiring” the huge allocation.

“There is an entire structure within the National Assembly whose job is to prepare different receipts and vouchers to cover every item in the budget,” Mr. Sanusi had said.

A review of the details of the National Assembly budget for 2009 highlights some items the lawmakers spend their huge annual budget on.

Out of a total appropriation of N106.64 billion for that year, recurrent expenditure was N101.39 billion, or 95 percent, allowing just N5.25 billion for capital projects.

Under the recurrent, overheads accounted for N87.69 billion, or 86.48 percent, with personnel cost allocated N13.69 billion, or 13.52 percent.

Apart from payment of salaries and other fringe benefits, which takes an average of about N10 billion, Mr. Sanusi said the bulk of the allocations were shared among members according to pre-agreed formula after allocations for such items as constituency projects, budget tracking, software, hardware, implementation and monitoring; NASS equipment; judgment debt; renovation projects; general goods and non-personal services; general travels and transport (local and international) as well as general training.

Other provisions include general utilities; general materials and supplies; general maintenance services; security vote, consultancy and professional services; insurance premium charges; fuel and lubricants; contingency; NASS programmed activities, NASS law magazine; media and Public Relations as well as miscellaneous expenses.

Mr. Mark stepped down from the leadership of the National Assembly in June. He would most likely be remembered more for the lack of accountability under his watch.

From: http://www.premiumtimesng.com/