Niger Delta Avengers Spits Fire

This is an open letter from the Niger Delta Avengers on their website signed by their spokesperson, Brig.Gen Mudoch Agbinibo,

Tompolo before your eyes your people are suffering.

Our dear brother Tompolo, how is your friendship with the Nigerian Government. The people you took side with against us (the Niger Delta Avengers). We offered you the olive branch by beckoning you to join us in this struggle, but you refused

It is not our business what goes on in Gbaramatu Kingdom but our concern is the innocent children, women and aged people whom the Nigerian military has chased away from their homes now taking refuge in the forest. We warned you beforehand that the Nigerian Government can never be trusted.

To the Nigeria military, why are you looking for soft targets? If you are looking for the Avengers you know how to find us. Don’t deceive your President. Information gathered by the Intelligence unit of the Niger Delta Avengers revealed that Oil Marine Services (OMS) whose Chairman and CEO is Capt. Okunbor Idahosa also known, as Capt. Hosa is the company Nigerian Government awarded the Pipeline surveillance contract to spanning from Escravos to Lokoja. The said Capt. Hosa bribed the Brigade Commander Benin (Brig. Gen. Faruk Yahaya) alongside the Officer Commanding Army Gunboat, JTF (Major. M. B. Yahaya) with the sum of two hundred and fifty million naira (250,000,000) in collaboration with one Ayiri Emami to destroy Gbaramatu Kingdom in the guise of looking for the Niger Delta Avengers.

The question is, why the innocent people of Gbaramatu, why the innocent pregnant women, why unleash terror on the aged people of Gbaramatu, Capt. Hosa, Major Yahaya, Ayiri and Brid. Gen Faruk must you waste all these innocent blood just to secure the pipeline surveillance job? Why making the innocent people of Gbaramatu suffer? This act of the Nigerian Army to us is the greatest act of cowardice. This fight we believe is against the Avengers and not the innocent villagers of Gbaramatu Kingdom.

Where is the International Community and the United Nations when all these unspeakable injustice, is served the people of Gbaramatu Kingdom by the very unprofessional Nigerian Military? Are they not aware of the raping of young girls, looting and destruction of properties by the Nigeria military in Gbaranmatu kingdom?

As for you Tompolo, what do you have to say about the horrible treatment meted your people by Nigerian Military, are you still going to call the Niger Delta Avengers criminals, are you still going to take side with the Nigeria Government against your people? What happened to you (Tompolo)? We respect the love you have for your people the Niger Delta. What is really happening to you when the likes of Mr Ayiri, Capt Hosa and Co are unleashing this kind of atrocities on your people, has the wealth you acquire made you soft that you don’t know what to do anymore?

 The Nigerian Military cannot intimidate us by harassing innocent Niger Deltans. Gbaramatu is just one kingdom in Delta State. The Niger Delta is made up of seven States, it is therefore very funny to lure us to halt our well-planned line of actions that will shock the whole world by harassing innocent villagers.

To you Capt. Hosa the new pipeline protector; the intelligence unit of the Avengers has your full data, we know where all your assets are located and that most of your businesses are in the Niger Delta. For this single act of injustice against the innocent people of Gbaramatu you, your wife and entire family will suffer.

To Major M.B. Yahaya, we are sure you have not seen real combat before; how did you rose to the rank of a Major this is to show that Nigerian Military is finished if it to depend on people like you. You are only good at harassing innocent women and children in the name of looking for the Niger Delta Avengers. We are not surprised because all Nigerian Military are corrupt. Be assured that we are making this fight personal with you as we shall make your life a living hell. Can anyone tell the difference between Major MB Yahaya, Brig. Gen Faruk Yahaya and Boko Haram? We are asking because we cannot spot any difference.

Is the Nigeria military now a hired gun for the rich? The Amnesty International should take note of these officers who authorized the harassing of the innocent people of Gbaranmatu.

To the International Oil Companies and Indigenous Oil Companies, it’s going to be bloody this time around. Your facilities and personnel will bear the brunt of our fury, which shall fall upon you like a whirling wind.

Brig.Gen Mudoch Agbinibo
Spokesperson.

Vera Sidika Twerking In A Bathtub Video

Jesus please fix this...

President Buhari's Federal Excuses Council by Reno Omokri

On January 22, 2016, I tweeted a joke which went viral. I had said that at meetings of the Federal Executive Council, the minister of information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, would address members and say 'turn to your neighbour and say, neighbour have you blamed Jonathan today'!

Yes, it was a joke, but like most good jokes, it had and still has a basis in reality!

The President and his ministers appear ill prepared for office and the evidence of this is their inability to take responsibility for the situation of things in Nigeria.

Was it not John Burroughs who said "a man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else"?

Those words should be embossed on a plaque and placed in a very prominent location at the Council Chambers of the Presidential Villa.

Seeing this admonition weekly may help members of the Federal Executive Council take responsibility and stop acting the victim.

For example, Nigerians were shocked when the minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said in December of 2015 that the Jonathan administration, which had left office six months ago, was responsible for the biting fuel scarcity the nation was and still is grappling with.

That statement by Mr. Lai Mohammed is a classic case of psychological projection (a psychological disorder characterized by a patient defending himself against his own unpleasant realities by denying the existence of the reality while at the same time blaming another for it).

And it gets worse. It is bad enough that this administration refuses to take responsibility for its own failures, it also wants to take credit for the success of others.

In a treatise bothering on megalomania, the publicity and communications team of President Buhari's office claimed the implementation of the Treasury Single Account (AKA TSA) as the major achievement of the first 365 days of the Buhari administration.

But for a government that prides itself on anti-corruption, that statement, fraudulent as it is, is dishonest and 'fantastically corrupt'!

First of all, the Treasury Single Account WAS NOT an idea of the Buhari administration and secondly the present government DID NOT initiate its implementation.

The TSA was conceived by the Jonathan administration and there was to be a staggered implementation because from an expert point of view, it was thought that if all Federal Government funds were suddenly pulled out of the commercial banking sector in one fell swoop, the shock on that sector would be so immense that it would trigger job losses and perhaps bank failures. It was thought that a gradual implementation would allow banks recover such that the baby would not be thrown out with the bath water.

Enter the Buhari administration which, in a hurry to claim credit, did not tread with caution, but in one fell swoop forcefully withdrew all Federal Government funds with the threat of sanctions to non compliant banks. 

Rather than claim this as an achievement, this administration should chalk this one up as a big failure because in their rush to implement something that should have been gradual they have unleashed an unintended consequence on the banking sector such that Nigerian banks over the last year have shed something like 50,000 jobs.

As a matter of fact, the pro-Buhari Leadership Newspaper had as a major headline on September 12, 2015, 'Banks Begin Massive Sack Over Treasury Single Account'!

Yet, even as the reality of their rushed action stares them in the face, a Presidential spokesman has the nerve to accuse former President Jonathan of lacking the will to implement the TSA!

And the excuses continue! In order to explain away its lackluster performance, various ministers and mouthpieces of the current administration have been touring media houses blaming the precarious state of the economy on the refusal of the Jonathan administration to save for the rainy day when crude oil prices were high.

In fact, President Buhari himself said "In the First Republic, more enduring infrastructure was built with meager resources. But in the past 16 years, we made a lot of money without planning for the rainy day.” 

But even as this administration is set on revising history, it should not be forgotten so soon that the Jonathan administration met about $6.5 billion in the Excess Crude Account, ECA, and increased it to almost $9 billion by 2012. However, the Nigerian Governors Forum, using their influence at the House of Representatives, had gotten that August body to declare the Excess Crude Account illegal in 2012. 

So excruciating was the pressure from the NGF and most notably from then then Rivers state Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, for the Jonathan administration to end the Excess Crude Account and the Sovereign Wealth Fund and instead share the funds in those accounts amongst the three tiers of government that they approached the Supreme Court, to challenge the legality of the Excess Crude Account and Jonathan's decision to transfer $1 billion from that account to the Sovereign Wealth Fund.

Working in tandem with Amaechi and his supporters in the NGF, the then minority APC members of the House of Representatives approached a Federal High Court on the 7th of February, 2014, for a perpetual injunction restraining the Jonathan administration from operating the ECA and to pay all the proceeds of that account into the Federation Account for sharing amongst the three tiers of government.

So it is quite clear that President Buhari made the accusation he made on April 4th, 2016 without cross checking the facts or consulting history. If the President is not happy that more funds were not saved in the Excess Crude Account, he should call a Federal Executive Council meeting and ask members to get up and point accusing fingers at his ministers of transport and Power, Works and Housing. 

In the last 365 days, the most consistent thing that has emanated from the Federal Executive Council is blames, excuses, finger pointing and a refusal to accept responsibility.

As at last count, the President and his ministers have excused their inability to stem the economic tide, fully defeat Boko Haram, provide jobs for Nigerians, maintain the availability of petrol, fix roads and improve power on the previous administration.

The funniest thing is that just as the media team of the Buhari led Presidency was reeling out its achievement in office on its first anniversary, two state governors were also doing the same thing.

The shocking thing however is that if you get the list of achievements released by Rivers state Governor, Nyesom Wike and Lagos state Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, and compare them with what has been released by the Presidency, the shocking verdict is that in terms of tangible achievements, like roads built and houses constructed and public infrastructure, both of these states have individually outperformed the Federal Government!

Do not take my word for it. Google their released anniversary documents and compare and contrast them by yourself. Ignore such silly and intangible achievements included in the Presidential list like 'motivated the military' and 'no more road blocks and curfews' (believe me, the President's team listed these as his achievements!) and focus on tangibles like roads constructed or hospitals built etc and it becomes clear to even the most brainwashed Buhari supporter that both Lagos and Rivers individually beat the Federal Government hands down.

Both Wike and Ambode took over from predecessors that did not really support them and who left huge debts and a high monthly wage bill, yet despite these seeming obstacles, both of them have proven the adage true that you will either find a way or you will find an excuse.

And for those who are saying that it is not realistic to expect a new government to achieve much, let me remind them that in his first year in office, former President Jonathan did not deliver excuses or blames. 

In fact in his first year, former President Jonathan revived the Nigerian Railway Corporation and for the first time in decades the Lagos to Kano rail services commenced in 2012 at a cost of ₦1500. He also built nine new universities including the only federal university in Katsina state where President Buhari hails from. Inflation reduced from 10.2% to 9.4% in his first year and remained at single digits throughout his tenure. Average Life Expectancy increased from 47 years to 52 years (according to the UN). In the same period he also launched the NigeriaSat-2 and NigeriaSat-X satellites to expand Internet Bandwidth and provide early warning to prevent natural disasters as well established the Automotive Development Fund amongst others.

Many Nigerians must be wondering that if the Jonathan administration was as bad as the Buhari government says it is, then how come he had to leave office before they started experiencing double digit inflation, negative economic growth rate and 'budget padding'?

In conclusion, the word 'execute' means to carry out or put into effect something. When you have a body of men and women who are not carrying out anything, it is hard to see how you can honestly call them a Federal Executive Council. What are they executing? Put it this way, are you an executive if all you do is execute excuses? 

PDP Memes on Buhari's 1 Year in Office

Photos: FG Yes/No on Budget Implementation Within 24Hours

Chai there is God ooooo...

President Buhari's 1 Year Score Card

smh...

$100,000,000 offered to the KARDASHIANS to star in a Hollywood movie

The Kardashians are set to bring their madness to the one place they have yet to conquer the big screen. Hollywood bosses are in talks with America’s most famous family about a first Kardashian feature film.

Kris Jenner’s Kardashians klan have been offered more than $100,000,000 to star in the movie, which will have a full storyline and be shot in Los Angeles and New York. The news was confirmed this week by a top film exec to the Kardashian’s biographer, New York Times best-selling author IAN HALPERIN.

He revealed: A top Hollywood studio executive told me today that his major studio intends to make a huge offer to the Kardashian family to star in a feature-length film.

The studio’s research showed the Kardashians could become the highest TV show-turned-movie ever.

The first Sex and the City movie pulled in close to $500million worldwide and a Kardashian film would do almost double. The exec stressed that part of the deal would include a nine-figure up front offer plus a backend of the film’s earnings. One of my key Kardashian sources has confirmed the family are very interested about graduating to the big screen. Since launching on E! in 2007, Keeping Up With The Kardashians has become one of history’s most successful reality shows.

Read more at www.thesun.co.uk

Python emerges from a toilet and bites man on the penis while he sits on the loo

A Thai man has been rushed to hospital after a massive snake wound its way through toilet plumbing and bit his penis. The man named as Atthaporn Boonmakchuay, 38, was sitting down on his toilet at his home in Thailand when the reptile struck. He said that he felt a sharp bite on the tip of his penis earlier this morning. But when he realised what was going on, the snake wouldn’t let go. He yelled for his wife to come and help as he and the snake thrashed around the bathroom in a desperate battle.

The vigorous fight with the reptile splattered blood all around the room and Boonmakchuay thought of a cunning plan to get rid of the slippery serpent. He craftily tied a rope around the snake’s head and attached the end to the door handle.

The ingenious move helped to detach the reptile from his penis and he collapsed after his battle with the snake and was rushed to hospital.

It is believed that the serpent swam up a pipe into the toilet. Incredible footage also documents how the emergency services managed to take the snake out of the plumbing. Fire fighters had to smash the toilet to take the huge snake out. The python was still alive during this gargantuan mission. The snake’s full size is revealed when the authorities manage to release him from the toilet. It will be sent back into the wild soon.

Read more at www.thesun.co.uk

The Tomato Blight A Metaphor By Reuben Abati

One of the major news items in circulation has been the scarcity of tomato. Incidentally, Nigeria is (was) the 14th largest producer of tomato in the world and the second largest producer in Africa, after Egypt, but our country hardly produces enough to meet the local demand of about 2.3 million tonnes, and lacks the capacity to ensure an effective storage or value chain processing of what is produced. Out of the 1.8 million tonnes that the country produces annually, 900, 000 tonnes are left to rot and waste. Meanwhile, tomato-processing companies in the country operate below capacity and many of them have had to shut down.

The CEO of Erisco Foods, Lagos, Eric Umeofia laments that tomato processing companies lack access to foreign exchange to enable them buy heat-resistant seedlings and other tools that would help ensure the country’s sufficiency in local production of tomato paste. Similarly, Dangote Tomato Factory recently suspended operations due to the scarcity of tomatoes and the assault on its tomato farms by a tomato leaves destroying moth, known as “tuta absoluta” – a South American native, also known as the Tomato Ebola, because of its Ebola-like characteristics.

Other reasons have been advanced for the scarcity of tomatoes in our markets: the fuel crisis which has driven up costs making it difficult and expensive for Northern tomato farmers to bring tomatoes to the South, insurgency in the North East which has resulted in the closure of many tomato farms in that region, thus cutting off national output, the recent ethnic crisis in Mile 2, during which Hausa Fulani traders and other marketers engaged in a murderous brawl, climate-change induced drought and heat wave in the Northern-tomato producing states of Kaduna, Katsina, Kano, Jigawa, Plateau, Kano and Gombe. In the best of seasons, Nigeria spends $1.5 billion annually on the importation of tomato products. The cost in this regard, seems certain to rise.

Already, the effect of this tomato blight is being felt in households. Whereas a few months ago, a basket of tomato was about N5,000, it is now about N40, 000 per basket. Housewives are protesting bitterly about how a piece of tomato vegetable has jumped up by about 650%, such that three pieces now go for as much as N500. Tomato in Nigeria today is, thus, more expensive than a litre of petrol!

I have it on good authority, that in those face-me-I-face you quarters where the poor live, it has in fact become risky to leave a tin of tomato paste carelessly or fresh tomatoes lying around: they would most certainly be stolen, and there have been reports of soup pots suddenly vanishing should the owner take a minute from the communal kitchen to use the loo.

Many are resorting to desperate measures to sort out a growing epidemic of empty stomachs and empty pockets. Unless this matter is addressed seriously and urgently, the social crisis may be far too costly in both the short and the long run: hungry people could become sick and angry, hungry citizens could become thieves and a nuisance, they could also become angry voters and a rebellious populace.

However, the most brilliant explanation that we have received so far from the federal ministry of agriculture and rural development is that there is tomato scarcity because of “tuta absoluta”. According to the minister of agriculture, Audu Ogbeh, a group of experts will be immediately commissioned to advise the government of Nigeria on the way forward.

The mandate of these experts is to “appraise the situation”, and then give us “a figure on cost of treatment…so we will source funds to tackle it.” Is that what this is all about? I am not in the mood at this moment, to spoil anyone’s day, with straight-to-the-nose-the-mouth-and-the-groin punches but I think that the response from the federal ministry of agriculture is far from adequate, if not stupid. Please, where is that bow-tie wearing Akinwumi Adesina, the former minister of agriculture, now on loan to the African Development Bank?

What we are dealing with is a national food security crisis. Before the commissioned outsiders begin to “appraise and cost”, the resident experts in the ministry, should know that it is not only tomato that has become a scarce and expensive item in Nigerian kitchens, virtually every food item has become unaffordable and there are many homes that can no longer feed properly. The scarcity of tomato is only a metaphor for the spread of staggering inflation and the hunger that ravages the land.

A bag of rice that was once N7, 000 is now N19,000 per bag, a congo of garri has jumped from N170 to N300, bread from N200 per loaf to N300, and same is the case with virtually every food item. More than this, tomato scarcity is a metaphor for the lack of continuity in governance processes (What happened to all that revolution in the agriculture sector under Akinwumi Adesina as minister?) and of course, for the failure since independence, to take agriculture seriously as a major vehicle of national security and development. If the response to this query is that nothing concrete actually took place under previous administrations, then what is the present Minister’s blueprint? What is his comprehensive agenda for ensuring food sufficiency?

It is indeed absurd that in 2016, we cannot produce enough tomatoes to feed ourselves – the short of it is that that single narrative about “tomato ebola” calls for more rigorous thinking. It is not enough to deal episodically with tomato scarcity, or the scarcity of any other food item; this must be done within the context of a plan of action. The job of government officials is to give the people hope and not to deepen their agony. A committee of experts looking into the scarcity of tomato, and how to throw money at the problem (!) is a round-about excuse for doing nothing. The knowledge that is required is within easy reach and much of the issues at stake, those within the province of the Ministry and those located in the larger context, are out there in the public domain, and perhaps, also in those accumulated files and old reports that most officials hardly ever read. The ministry also spoke up rather too tardily.

For weeks, there have been all kinds of ethnic and political insinuations about how tomato became scarce, some of which, allowed to fester for too long, could have resulted in other crises. And we can only hope that the connection between food and health will not be lost on the experts. The health benefits of tomato alone are so many; to have a population no longer eating tomatoes, because of its cost could have long-term health implications. And while we expect the federal government to take the lead in terms of visioning, we should remember to ask: what are the state governments also doing? What are the states doing to promote agriculture and ensure food security? Apart from Kaduna State, other state governments have been criminally silent about the food crisis or they really don’t know since they probably get supplies of fresh tomatoes from neighboring countries for their own kitchens. All the big men eating imported fresh tomatoes when we, the people, can’t get tomatoes to eat, just “continuu eh” but don’t forget that a hungry and angry voter is an enemy of politicians.

There is another side to this whole tomato thing that is noteworthy. Special notice must be taken of the reference to the insurgency in the North East as a threat to agriculture. It is also interesting that most of the tomatoes produced in the country are from the North, and the Middle Belt. Check the list of major tomato producing states in Nigeria: Kaduna, Katsina, Kano, Jigawa, Gombe, Plateau. Also check the list of the states where people are complaining most about the cost of tomato: they are all in the South! We should ask: so Southern Nigerians are grumbling about tomato being expensive and scarce, why are they so dependent on Northern farmers? They want tomatoes from the North, but are these not the same people who don’t want to see Northern cattle herdsmen in the South? Are these not the same people campaigning on social media that Southerners should stop buying beef in order to spoil market for Northern herdsmen? They are now begging for tomatoes from Northern farms?

In Ekiti, the state governor has already given local hunters an executive order to shoot any AK-47 wielding herdsmen sighted anywhere in the state. It may not have occurred to the governor that an AK-47 is far more versatile than a “shakabula” that is made by local blacksmiths and that he may actually be sending his local hunters on a suicide mission, but I doubt if the same governor will stop lorry loads of fresh and healthy tomato baskets coming from Gombe to Ekiti markets! Thus, whereas cattle-grazing is causing ethnic division, tomato is generating so much hypocritical love for the Northern farmer: “Please, send us tomato, stop selling tomato to the tomato paste producers!”.

This country is truly far more integrated and its various units so interdependent, in more ways than the politics of hate and division would ever allow the people to see. It is tomato today, should onions, millet and kolanuts also become very scarce, Southerners may start begging Northern farmers to please bring their produce to the South. This is the truth of our interdependence but we need to get our politics right and those who exploit ethnic divisions must allow the country to grow.

One final point: The scarcity of tomato and the threat of a national food crisis should remind policy makers at all levels, of the importance of agriculture. A nation that can feed itself is a safe and secure nation. A hungry nation can only have sad people.

Tomato is incidentally, a versatile vegetable, very easy to grow, usually ready for harvest between 60 – 85 days. Those who are screaming “give us tomatoes”, and playing politics with it, may also do well to embark on subsistence farming: create a small garden in the backyard, turn that uncultivated plot of land into a small farm, plant a variety of food plants, remove that your white collar, stop waiting on the Northern tomato farmer, get on with the food revolution we need…while hoping that some day, Nigerian leaders will stop waiting for oil money and rediscover agriculture as Nigeria’s true gold.

Dr. Reuben Abati was spokesman and special adviser, Media and Publicity to President Goodluck Jonathan (2011 – 2015). He tweets from @abati1990.

Prison Bae: Sarah Seawright's Stunning Mugshot is the Latest Internet Sensation

Sarah Seawright who was arrested in the States has sent the internet into meltdown after her flawless mugshot went viral. Sarah Seawright was collared in Pulaski County, Arkansas, after failing to appear in court following a careless driving charge.

The wild beauty has a mischievous past and has faced accusations of robbery, kidnapping and battery, reports in the US reveal.

But that has not stopped her winning over a legion of fans from all over the world.

As soon as the internet picked up on Seawright's mugshot, a Twitter frenzy kicked up. She could stab me 9 times and I'd apologize and buy her Chipotle, wrote Lil Nicki Vert. One Twitter user even questioned whether Seawright had a 'glam squad' to help her get camera ready

Seawright has taken notice of her new-found internet infamy and seems to be enjoying it. She told visitors to her Facebook page to follow her on Snapchat, where she shared a video saying 'f*** the judge,' according to the New York Daily News.

It's unclear if Seawright will have a future in the modeling world like internet superstar Jeremy Meeks received after his mugshot caused a Twitter meltdown in 2014.

Read Mmore at www.thesun.co.uk

Reno Omokri: And The Truth Shall Set President Buhari Free

Having worked twice at the Nigerian Presidential villa and once at the British Parliament, if there is anything I have learnt, it is that it is impossible to over inform a leader. You can under inform him, but no matter how much information you give a leader, you cannot give him too much information.

In today's world, strength and weakness are gauged differently than they were, say in 1984. In the millennial age in which we live in, information is power and lack of information is weakness.
My concern is that there are a lot of weaknesses in Nigeria's seat of power because not enough information is being given to President Muhammadu Buhari. 

I, like other Nigerians, have heard or read reports of ministers in President Buhari's cabinet being afraid to challenge him or disagree with him. Perhaps unawares, the minister of state for petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, corroborated these reports in a recorded YouTube video now circulating where he revealed that the President ignores his ministers when they bring up issues that he does not want to discuss. 

Having such anodyne personalities around you just means that you are living in a bubble, seeing things as you want them to be and not as they are.

On Friday May 20th, 2016, Dr. Yemi Kale, the Statistician General of the Federation and head of the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics revealed that Nigeria's economy had not grown in the first quarter of the year but had rather shrunk by 0.36%, the worst contraction in 25 years! 

Since the announcement was made, there has been various reactions with pundits pointing at this or the other as being the cause of this setback.

But I am convinced beyond any reasonable doubts that this negative trend owes more to President Muhammadu Buhari's utterances on our economy and polity than to any other single causative factor.

The bigger problem is that even though I suspect that his ministers know that what I have just said is true, they would rather pander to the President and like Dr. Chris Ngige, say that Nigerians are lucky to have President Buhari (obvious Ngige does not know the meaning of luck).

In the last eleven months, the President had traversed the globe and has spoken about Nigeria's economy as if he was the chief undertaker of our polity rather than the chief marketer that he is meant to be.

Of what benefit is it to the President's agenda or to Nigeria's economic well being for him to go to foreign nations and instead of highlighting the positive things that are happening in Nigeria, he begins to regale his hosts with the most unsavory stories about Nigeria. 

And some of the stories the President tells are just that-tales. They are not factual. At best they are arguable.

You go to India for a summit where other world leaders are competing with you for the attention of venture capitalists and foreign investors and while your counterparts are talking about how great their countries are, you tell the audience how everybody in your country is corrupt except you and oh, can they come and invest in your country? 

Only a foolish investor would go and invest in a country whose President thinks his citizens are 'criminals' (as the President said to the Telegraph of UK in February) and whose officials are 'fantastically corrupt' (as the President said in agreement with British PM David Cameron when questioned by Sky News). 

The President speaks on the Nigerian economy and polity without any filters and his comments are causing his chickens to roost with devastating consequences for all of us. 

Never in the history of Nigeria has there been such a divestment of investment as we have seen in the past year. 

Truworths has pulled out of Nigeria, Virgin Atlantic has closed up shop, Iberia is pulling out, RenCap is pulling funds from Nigeria, both Alquity Investment Management Ltd. and Duet Asset Management Ltd. are divesting their Nigeria holding. 

Zenith Bank laid off 1,200 staff, FCMB let go 700 employees, Ecobank sacked 50% of its top management staff. The President of the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mr. Tony Ejinkeonye revealed that in just two months 50,000 staff were laid off in Abuja alone.

The results are telling. A little over a year ago, Nigeria was projected by CNNMoney to be the third fastest growing economy in the world behind China and Qatar yet just two weeks ago the International Monetary Fund released its World Economic Outlook and Nigeria is not even among the top 15 fastest growing economies in Africa let alone the world! 

And when you try to raise the alarm, the refrain from the government and its horde of unofficial spokesmen is that the downturn is caused by the fall in crude prices.

Yet this logic is flawed. The government's own economic monitoring agency, the National Bureau of Statistics itself reported that the exponential growth Nigeria enjoyed especially from 2012 to its 2014 climax (when our economy overtook South Africa to be Africa's largest economy) was spurred not by the oil sector, but "this growth was largely driven by improved activities in the telecommunications, building and construction, hotel and restaurant and business services" to quote the NBS.

Yes, oil accounts for something like 90-95 percent of our foreign exchange revenues but it only accounts for a mere 15% of our GDP.

The service sector and the commercial and real sector are the engine or used to be the engine of our economic growth. But these sectors are heavily capital and technology intensive and require cooperation with foreign investors and when you consistently bad mouth your economy and its regulators investor confidence tanks and the result is what we are seeing today.

I support President Buhari's anti corruption war but it should not be a substitute for sound economic ideas or policies. 

And the way the President has carried out his anti corruption crusade is in itself self sabotaging and feeds the narrative of those who say that Nigeria is far too complex and dynamic a country to be run by someone who should be quietly collecting his pension.

  And President Buhari's behavior is flowing down the pyramid. There is a contagious effect in the utterances of major figures in his administration. 

For instance, when Vice President Osinbajo tells the world that the Jonathan administration looted $15 Billion in security contracts, many people in the West who like to read such stories to justify their hidden opinion that the Black man cannot govern himself, will clap for him.

Coming from the nation's own Vice President, the Western press will report the news as a fact. At that level, such a statement carries the weight of an admission.

But then ask yourself, what was the entire security budget for the five years that Jonathan was President of Nigeria?

In 2011, defense and security had a budget of ₦348 billion or just over $2 billion. In 2012 it skyrocketed to ₦921 billion or $5.7 billion. It grew to ₦1.055 trillion in 2013 or $6 billion. In 2014, ₦968 billion was budgeted for defence and security or $5.8 billion. The 2015 budget was passed in April and President Jonathan handed over to President Buhari a month later so I cannot see how the previous administration could have 'chopped' that money.

So of the $19 billion budgeted for defence and security while former President Jonathan was in office, how could $15 billion have been looted when more than half that amount went to paying salaries?

Did Vice President Osinbajo think this accusation through?

The President and his vice with their cabinet and their political appointees are not a court. They cannot convict anybody. As such when they speak this way, what it amounts to is propagandized activity.

In an anti corruption war one must separate activity from results. Results are convictions from a court after due and diligent prosecution. And when you look at it from that perspective, this administration has been delivering activity and not results. 

For instance, then candidate Muhammadu Buhari and his party, the All Progressive Congress, had called the subsidy payments made by the Jonathan administration a fraud

They claimed that the amount was too high at ₦1.1 trillion in 2014.

Well if fuel subsidy had been a fraud, the first thing that should have happened naturally when President Muhammadu Buhari took over was that the amount should have reduced, but it DID NOT reduce. As a matter of fact, Nigeria spent over $5 billion on fuel subsidy in 2015 and President Buhari was in power for most of that year! 

The point I am making here is that the elections are over. President Buhari and his administration should stop tarnishing the image of Nigeria in the mistaken belief that they are rubbishing the person of former President Jonathan.

The President should take in the big picture and realize that you need to be below somebody in order to pull him down.

One year has come and gone and has seemingly been wasted pointing fingers in blame instead of at solutions. The time for blame games have gone.

Only last month, President Buhari complained that the Sahara desert was advancing southward. He should also realize that that is not the only thing going south. The Nigerian economy is going south at perhaps a faster rate and blaming others for it will never stem the tide.

The President should focus on marketing his plans and policies when he travels abroad instead of de marketing the plans and policies of former President Jonathan's administration

It has been said that if you want a conversation with a habitual complainer to end abruptly, just ask him how he intends to fix the problem. That is the question Nigerians want answered by President Buhari.

Under former President Jonathan, Nigeria's economy exploded and became the largest economy in Africa and the 24th largest economy in the world. Let it not be said that under President Buhari that economy collapsed like a pack of clouds because the hand that should have steered the ship was too busy pointing an accusing finger.

The Niger Delta Avengers And The Game Of Vengeance By Reuben Abati

Niger Delta Avengers is the name of a new group of militants in the Niger Delta who claim to be different from the former agitators and militants who operated between 2006 and 2009, largely under the umbrella of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). The title of this group may well serve as the thematic and definitive umbrella for the resurgence of low-level insurgency in the Niger Delta, for in the last month alone, more groups have joined the NDA to wage war against oil installations, the Buhari government, and the Nigerian state. These include the Isoko Liberation Movement and the Red Egbesu Water Lions. The groups are working in concert with the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) led by detained Nnamdi Kanu.

The NDA runs a website (created in February 2016) where it posts news items and statements; and in terms of rhetoric, and activities, there is no doubt that the various groups are indeed on “a vengeance mission”. They are angry over what they consider the continued marginalization of the Niger Delta, the unjust allocation of oil mining licenses to persons from non-oil producing areas, the hounding of officials and associates of the Jonathan administration by the present administration (hence General Torunanawei, coordinator of the Red Egbesu Water Lions issues a seven-day ultimatum calling for the release of Colonel Sambo Dasuki, and the de-freezing of the accounts of ex-militant leader Government Ekpemupolo). There is also some concern about environmental pollution, the scrapping of the Maritime University at Okerenkoko, and undisguised discontent with the Buhari administration.

More than any of the emergent groups, the Niger Delta Avengers have used their online resources to articulate the basis of this vengeance mission in such posts as “Operation Red Economy”,  “We shall do whatever is necessary to protect the Niger Delta interest”, and “Keep your threat to yourself, Mr. President”. Their statements are written in halting, extremely poor English, but their various strike teams, which they boast about, have proven to be deadly through recent attacks on oil infrastructure creating a global oil supply crisis, and bringing down Nigeria’s daily oil production from 2.2 million barrels to just about 1.4 million.

Shell has had to shut down its Forcados terminal. Chevron’s Escravos operation has been breached. ENI and Exxon Mobil have declared “force majeure”.  Shell and Chevron are moving their staff out of the Niger Delta. The avengers claim they are not into kidnapping, or the killing of people and soldiers, but no one is sure yet about the depth and extent of this new phase of Niger Delta insurgency, and of course, the oil and gas multinationals have since learnt not to trust either the Nigerian government or the criminals who target oil infrastructure to make political and ethnic statements.  But the question is: why vengeance? The reason this question is important explains the seeming indifference to the crisis, at least for now, within the larger Nigerian community and why the avengers have so far been dismissed, to their dismay, as “empty heads” and “criminals.” Not a few persons have asked: what else do Niger Delta militants want?

Recall that in 2009, late President Umaru Yar’Adua introduced an amnesty programme to end Niger Delta insurgency. Two years earlier, the architects of Nigerian politics had also deemed it necessary to allocate the vice presidency to the Niger Delta, and by sheer providence, the occupier of that slot, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan soon became acting president following the death of his boss, and later in 2011, he won the presidential election and became president.

For about seven years, under this programme, introduced by President Yar’Adua and sustained by President Jonathan, Niger Delta militants were demobilized and disarmed. The top hierarchy soon became security consultants to the federal government, monitoring pipelines, and helping to check oil theft. The middle cadre was placed on a monthly stipend while those who could be trained were sent to technical colleges and universities in Southern Africa and Eastern Europe. The militants became rich and gentrified, and with their kinsman in office as president in Abuja, the people of the Niger Delta began to feel a sense of ownership and belongingness that no one in that region had felt since 1960.

But what is now happening clearly shows the limits of the politics of appeasement that Nigeria has played since independence. No country can be successfully run on a short-term basis and through the assignment of tokens to aggrieved parties within the union. It was mere delusion to have ever imagined that the people of the Niger Delta could ever be successfully appeased with a pacifying short-term amnesty programme and a shot at the presidency.

Even under President Jonathan, there were protests about the distribution of amnesty largesse, and disagreements among the former militants, who practically relocated to Abuja to take advantage of their brother’s ascendancy. The quarrel was all about who got what and it was only a matter of time, before those who felt short-changed would stage their own drama, which they have now started, in the hope that they may be luckier this time around and get their own share of appeasement. This is the sub-text of the deliberate distancing by the new boys from the old guard of militants.

They seem to have been further provoked by the arrival in Abuja of “a new Pharaoh who does not seem to know Joseph.” President Muhammadu Buhari has approved funding and payments under the Niger Delta Amnesty programme, he has also appointed a minister of Niger Delta and a special adviser on Niger Delta Amnesty, in addition to extending the amnesty initiative, beyond the initial December 2015 deadline to December 2017. But there is no programme of patronage, the type that channels money into the pockets of Niger Delta militants, warlords or foot-soldiers, and since Abuja also seems to have become wasteland for the once-triumphant Niger Deltan, the Jonathan crowd, and the fisherman’s cap, the informal patronage that turned many Niger Deltans into king’s men and women, has vanished.

The emergent militant groups also have other selfish reasons why they are angry not just with President Buhari but also with the Nigerian state, for in the end, after the 2009-2015 period, position, cash and contracts appeasement has not in any way resolved the core problems of existential and environmental crisis in the Niger Delta. Nigeria merely postponed the evil day and unless we deal more forthrightly with the vexatious issues of equity, federalism, justice and citizenship driving Niger Delta and Biafran nationalism, those who throw tokens at the problem can only do so in vain.

The bad news is that President Muhammadu Buhari doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to address these fundamental issues. He probably has every reason to be angry, and he may even raise such questions as: what is wrong with these Niger Delta Avengers? What exactly do they want to avenge -their kinsman losing election? Do they think they can blackmail government even when the amnesty programme has been “magnanimously” extended? These may sound emotional, but they are serious questions, signposting how access to power at the centre and survival in that space has become a victim of deterministic ethnic rivalry. The emerging trend that whoever becomes president of Nigeria now has to worry about the possibility of being sabotaged by an aggrieved ethnic group or groups is dangerous for our democracy.

Recall also that after the 2011 Presidential election, the people of the Niger Delta while certainly elated about one of their own emerging as president, were also painfully aware that in the course of the feverish politics of succession in 2010, leading up to the nominations for 2011, certain interests and voices from the North had threatened that should Dr. Jonathan become president, Nigeria would be made ungovernable for him. And as promised, the Boko Haram threat, which had been an issue before 2011, soon got worse and from 2011-2015, the Jonathan administration had to struggle endlessly with overt national security challenges designed and delivered in the North East, and other parts of the North. The Boko Haram crisis and the abduction of the Chibok girls eventually became key negative factors for the Jonathan campaign in the 2015 Presidential election.

It is also similarly on record that before and during the 2015 elections, certain Niger Delta elements also threatened that should President Jonathan lose the election, Nigeria would be made ungovernable for President Buhari. And again as promised, the South East and the South South, President Jonathan’s main support centres, have thrown up major security threats since President Buhari won and assumed office. When governance and politics are thus reduced to a game of thrones, democracy and sovereignty are endangered. Already the Niger Delta Avengers have announced a plan to declare a sovereign state of Niger Delta in October 2016. Nigeria sits on a precarious balance.

There is no justification however, for President Buhari, in dealing with these challenges, to also play the game of vengeance. Speaking in China, recently, he directed the military to crush the new Niger Delta militants and indeed there has been a scaling up of military operations in the region. A military solution to a crisis such as this, as has been learnt with the Boko Haram, and much earlier in the Niger Delta, ultimately proves to be inadequate; instead there should be a return to the core issues of making Nigeria a country that works for everyone regardless of extraction – religious or ethnic.

President Buhari is a livestock farmer; it should not be too difficult for him to understand how the chickens are now going home to roost in the Niger Delta.  In the face of unemployment rate hitting 12.1%, youth unemployment, 42.24%, the GDP recording a negative growth of -0.36%, inflation standing at 13.7%, crude oil accounting for 90% of exports and 70% of national revenue, crude oil production dropping to low levels, and the country facing recession, a foreign exchange and power supply crisis, and financial insolvency, renewed restiveness in the Niger Delta, and threats by avengers who want to cut off Nigeria’s key source of revenue, can only further deepen the people’s agony, and place the country on danger list.

President Buhari may deal with the impunity and criminality of the avengers, but Nigeria must address the more ideologically original parts of their protest, and how particularly, the politics of appeasement has made the country far more vulnerable than imaginable. Preventing the country from imploding so dangerously, on so many fronts, as is currently the case, should be considered a matter of urgent national importance.

Dr. Reuben Abati was spokesman and special adviser, Media and Publicity to President Goodluck Jonathan (2011 – 2015). He tweets from @abati1990.

Charles Novia On Nigeria’s Rapid Economic Decline Under President Buhari Is Alarming

Please, let’s be very honest with ourselves. Very honest.

You see that crap some people keep mouthing that things HAVE to get worse before they get better? I always restrain myself from throwing a rude retort to the hallucigenic proponents of such a ridiculous mantra.

They only mouth what is a face-save resignation to an anomie they arrogantly got us all into, even when sensible ones amongst us were warning that this administration has no economic policy, no economic direction and no predictable redemption in sight.

The only truthful thing I have believed in the past one year of this rut (not rot, I know what I’m saying) is that indeed the administration itself has admitted that things are WORSE under them. It’s that simple. The economy is WORSE. And the statistics prove it.

have plunged to the lowest in 25 years! Isn’t that a record!

Add the same official figures that the economy has been contracting in the past year and is likely to officially be in recession by next quarter, then you don’t need anyone to tell you where we are and where we are headed.

When we dip into official recession, it will take us at least a decade to come out of it. 7 to 10 years. The economy they met which was the biggest economy in Africa and the 21st largest economy in the world (correct me if I’m wrong ) which had been growing at 6% steadily for the past decade, they destroyed in just one year! And what is the official mantra? ‘ Things have to get worse before they get better’

It’s a disservice to Obama to even compare his approach to the American economic turnaround to Buhari’s slow poke policies but it’s the best example I have to give. Obama won the election in his first term and as soon as he was sworn in, we never heard anything from him again about how Bush ruined the economy. He went straight to work and kept pushing stimulus packages to shore up the American economy. His mindset, apart from the legacy of his campaign promises, was that the American Economy is too big to fail. It had to be stimulated.

It’s a disservice to humanity to compare his traction in his first 100 days to ours here in Nigeria but there’s no other option. After all, we were the biggest economy in Africa as at May 29 2015 when Bubu was sworn in and the World Bank has still projected the Nigerian economy to grow by 6% in 2016 despite the change of government. That assumption was predicated on the hope that Bubu would be savvy enough to put a strong economic direction in place.

It didn’t take up to two months before the best economists in the world started scratching their heads on Nigeria.

The Dude first took six months to chill, command and control the bucks in the economy with military fiat for a brimming economy like ours and quietly refused to listen when voices were groaning that the economy was sinking under him! The fall outs of that economic ignorance is what we are suffering today.

The Worst slide to recession in twenty-five years!

I have always said it that leaders of any nation are JUDGED by history and its people by the collective prosperity of the nation and the people during the reign of such rulers. No one remembers shit about your Guy Smiley face or Wooden Expressions to governance if the people are worse off during your reign. No one. They will always remember the economic  pains and pangs a leader caused them. And in present times, this is clearly the worst ever.

Some jocks will come up here to say it was caused by past governments. Rubbish. Convenient excuses. Shaka Momodu in his Thisday Column on Friday wrote that the present government got into power through elevated propaganda and were shocked that they won in spite of the lies they told during electioneering. And they know nothing else but to govern with propaganda which no one believes anymore. Their own propaganda has demystified them.

It’s very sad o. It’s very sad.

Sad that this had to happen and WORSE will happen again economically this year. Fuel prices will rise before December again. It’s inevitable. But that’s not even the big problem.

Oh….for those who think some of us ventilate because we wish those in power ill, I’m sorry for you. We speak out because patriotism demands that no one keeps silent when the obvious slide to crisis is staring at us. The other thing they ask is that I should be giving advice to the government on the way forward. Rubbish!

Didn’t this government come in with the sniggering arrogance of knowing it all? They know it all and haven’t eaten their humble pie in anyway. So let them ‘kontinu’.

If the middle class are feeling the pinch in the last and deliberate decimation of their own prosperity, you can imagine what the poor people are going through. The hunger I see in the eyes of people in cursory glances when driving on the streets is a sure sign of a pending apocalypse in this country. One day the poor will have no one else to eat within themselves and they will come for the rich

Charles Novia is an award-winning filmmaker. He is founder of November Productions and November Records.