Budget: Reps insist on impeaching Jonathan

Speaker, House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal and President Goodluck Jonathan
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INTERVENTIONS by the Peoples Democratic Party notwithstanding, the House of Representatives on Sunday insisted that President Goodluck Jonathan must achieve 100 per cent budget implementation by September or face impeachment.

Apparently reacting to interventions by the PDP and reported overtures by the President to save his job, the House said it would not change its resolution midway.

“A resolution of the House is a resolution of the House; nobody can change it midway,” spokesman for the lawmakers, Zakari Muhammed, told The PUNCH in Abuja.

Muhammed said the only alternative was for Jonathan to achieve a 100 per cent budget implementation by September in accordance with the resolution of the House.

The lawmakers on Thursday frowned on the poor implementation of the 2012 budget and set a September 18 deadline for the Jonathan administration.

“The budget implementation is about 35 percent,” the Chairman, Committee on Appropriation, Mr. John Enoh, had told his colleagues. Enoh said the committee found that only a meagre N200bn had been released to the Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government in the first two quarters of the year.

The House also directed the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to immediately release all first and second quarter capital votes to the MDAs.

The resolution, which was endorsed by all members, faulted the minister’s decision to withhold the funds of some MDAs on the grounds that they were unable to utilise their first quarter votes.

The House noted that withholding funds under any excuse was a “breach of the Appropriation Act (2012).”

The action of the House gave rise to reported moves by the Presidency and the leadership of the PDP at the weekend to make the lawmakers reverse their threat.

Jonathan and the National Chairman of the PDP, Bamangar Tukur, had reportedly reached out to the Speaker of the House, Aminu Tambuwal, with a view to influencing the lawmakers to soft-pedal on their threat.

But Muhammed said while the moves were legitimate, nobody could change a stand already taken by the legislators on the floor of the House.

“Our practice is that our resolution, once taken, it stands; it can only be reviewed on the floor of the House, not by an individual. A resolution of the House is a resolution of the House; nobody can change it midway. Not even the Speaker has the powers to change a House resolution,” the Chairman, House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, said.

He added, “What the Executive should do is to implement the budget in line with the House resolution.

“Let us hold on to the promise of the House Leader (Mrs. Mulikat Akande-Adeola) that things will improve in the next two months.”

Akande-Adeola, had on Thursday urged her colleagues to wait till the expiration of the September deadline, assuring them that she was confident that things would have improved by then.

According to Muhammed, if funds are released to the MDAs and there is evidence that projects are being executed, members will say so on resumption from break on September 18.

“We have employers; they are the people of our constituencies. If they feel the impact of the budget, they will tell us and members will react accordingly”, he stated.

Meanwhile, the PDP, the party to which Jonathan and majority of members of the House belong to, has said it will not allow the President to be impeached.

The party said it would do everything within its powers to make sure that the frosty relationship between the House and the President did not degenerate into the level of impeachment.

To avoid this, the party said it had started consultations on how to make sure that the House work harmoniously with Jonathan.

Secretary of the PDP Board of Trustees, Senator Walid Jubril, told one of our correspondents on Sunday that the party’s leadership had already commenced the process of ending the disagreement between the members of the lower legislative chamber and the Executive.

Though Jubril declined to give the specifics on the party’s intervention, he however said that the party would not fold its arms and allow the House impeach the President.

The party’s constitution in Article 12.80(f) bestows on the BOT the power to mediate in a conflict between the legislature and the Executive.

Jubril said, “The party is doing everything within its powers to resolve the misunderstanding between the two arms of government.

“Majority of the House members are PDP members and the President is also a member of our party. Therefore, we won’t allow the disagreement between them to lead to the point of impeaching the President

breaking news--Colorado shooting suspect James Holmes appears dazed in court

Colorado shooting suspect James Holmes appears dazed in court

Holmes in court, July 23, 2012. (AP/Pool)

UPDATE: 11:30 a.m. ET: James Holmes, the suspect in the Colorado theater massacre, appeared in a Colorado courtroom on Monday. A judge advised Holmes of his Miranda rights, and that there was probable cause to continue to hold him without bond on suspicion of first-degree murder.
Holmes, who was transported from from a holding cell to the courtroom via an underground tunnel, appeared dazed: his brow furrowed, his eyes opening and closing often. His hair was dyed red. His hands and feet were shackled. He did not speak.
Seated in a jury box next public defender Tamara Brady, Holmes never looked towards a gallery that included about two dozen victims and victims advocates.
The preliminary hearing lasted for about 11 minutes. Holmes' next court appearance is July 30.
A decision on whether to seek the death penalty could be weeks or months away, District Attorney Carol Chambers told reporters as she entered the courthouse.
"It will be a conversation we have with the victims before we make that decision," Chambers said.
He could also face additional counts of aggravated assault and weapons violations stemming from the mass shooting that killed 12 and injured 58 people at an Aurora, Colo., screening of "Dark Knight Rises." The rampage is among the worst mass shootings in modern-day American history.
[COMPLETE COVERAGE: Colorado theater shooting]
Holmes, clad in full body armor, surrendered to officers in a parking lot behind the cinema. He did not resist arrest, but investigators have since described the former medical student as uncooperative.
Authorities and news reports have portrayed the native Californian as smart and shy, but no motive for the shooting spree has surfaced.
Federal investigators were dispatched to assist local authorities with the investigation, but officials have indicated justice will be sought in a state courtroom.

Colorado has a death penalty, but only one inmate has been executed since 1977. Three inmates are currently on death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

"If James Holmes isn't executed," former Denver prosecutor Craig Silverman told Reuters, "Colorado may as well throw away its death penalty law."

Palestinians seek int’l probe as Al-Jazeera proves Arafat was poisoned

RAMALLAH, Palestinian  (AFP) – The Palestinians want an international probe into the death of former president Yasser Arafat after an investigation showed he may have been poisoned, an official told AFP Wednesday.
“We call for the formation of an international investigation committee modelled on the international investigation committee set up to look into the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri,” senior Palestinian official Saeb Erakat said.
The call came a day after the Al-Jazeera news channel broadcast the results of an investigation into the death of Arafat, who died in 2004, which showed that the Palestinian leader might have been poisoned with polonium.
The news channel said an analysis of Arafat’s belongings, which were given to his wife by the Paris hospital where he died, showed high levels of the radioactive substance.
Polonium was used to kill Russian former spy turned Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, who died in 2006 after drinking tea laced with the substance at a London hotel.
Francois Bochud, head of the Institute of Radiation Physics at the University of Lausanne, was among the scientists who worked with Al-Jazeera to analyse Arafat’s death and test his possessions.
“The conclusion was that we did find some significant polonium that was present in these samples,” he told Al-Jazeera.
Arafat, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who led the struggle for Palestinian statehood for nearly four decades, died on November 11, 2004, following several weeks of treatment.
He had been airlifted to France from his besieged headquarters in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
French officials, citing privacy laws, refused to reveal the precise cause of death or the nature of his condition, fuelling a host of rumours and theories as to the cause of his illness.
At the time of his death at the age of 75, Palestinian officials charged he had been poisoned by long-time foe Israel, but an inconclusive Palestinian investigation in 2005 ruled out cancer, AIDS or poisoning.
To confirm the theory that he was poisoned by polonium it would be necessary to exhume and analyse Arafat’s remains, Bochud said.
“If (Suha Arafat) really wants to know what happened to her husband (we need) to find a sample — I mean, an exhumation… should provide us with a sample that should have a very high quantity of polonium if he was poisoned,” he said.

FG signs $4.5bn refinery deal with US energy firm

ABUJA (AFP) – Nigeria on Monday signed a Memorandum of Understanding with an American energy firm to build six oil refineries, in a project worth 4.5 billion dollars, a government statement said.
Nigeria’s  refining infrastructure has largely crumbled, turning the country into a net importer, which often pays high prices for its own crude that has been processed abroad.
The deal between US-based Vulcan Energy, the Nigerian government and a local firm, aims to build six refineries with a combined capacity of 180,000 barrels per day, Nigeria’s Trade and Investment Ministry said in a statement, which also listed the 697.5 billion naira ($4.5 billion) price tag.
Two of the refineries are to be completed within a year, according to the terms of the MoU.
“This is the beginning of changing our old paradigm from exporting just raw materials and exporting jobs to the Western countries,” Trade and Investment Minister Olusegun Aganga said in the statement.
Nigeria produces around 2 million barrels a day of crude, making it the world’s eighth largest producer, but its petroleum industry has for years been riddled with corruption and poor management.
Last week, President Goodluck Jonathan fired the chief executive of the state oil firm NNPC, a move his office said was designed to boost transparency and accountability.
Vulcan’s vice president, Jim Mansfield, said the MoU highlighted Nigeria’s attractiveness as an investment destination.
“The funding for the project will be a non-Nigeria source and is from investors who firmly believe that Nigeria is a good place to do business,” he was quoted in the statement as saying.
Houston-based Vulcan currently operates in several US states as well as Canada.

Julian Assange sent extradition notice by Met Police

Julian Assange's Wikileaks published leaked diplomatic cables

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been served with an extradition notice by the Metropolitan Police.

Officers from the extradition unit delivered a note to Mr Assange at Ecuador's London embassy.
Mr Assange took refuge there last week and is seeking diplomatic asylum to prevent being sent to Sweden where he is accused of rape and assault.
Scotland Yard said the notice required a 40-year-old man to attend a police station "at a time of our choosing".
'Standard procedure' The Wikileaks website published a mass of leaked diplomatic cables that embarrassed several governments and international businesses.
Mr Assange fears that if he is sent to Sweden he could be sent on to the United States to face charges over Wikileaks and that he could face the death penalty.
In a brief statement to the BBC, Scotland Yard said: "This is standard procedure in extradition cases and is the first step in the removal process.
"He remains in breach of his bail conditions and failure to surrender would be a further breach of those conditions and he is liable to arrest."
Under international diplomatic arrangements, the Metropolitan Police cannot go into the embassy to arrest Mr Assange.
Mr Assange, whose bail conditions include staying at a named address between 22:00 and 08:00 BST, arrived at the embassy in Knightsbridge on Tuesday last week
Ecuador is considering Mr Assange's application for asylum.

Breaking News-- US declares Abubakar Shekau, 2 others terrorists

US declares Abubakar Shekau, 2 others terrorists

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States designated three leaders of the Boko Haram militant group as terrorists Thursday in a bid to stem the violence in Nigeria, which has endured a series of deadly attacks.
The three named by the State Department were Abubakar Shekau, widely believed to lead Boko Haram’s main Islamist cell, Abubakar Adam Kambar and Khalid al-Barnawi.
But the US stopped short of putting the group as a whole on its terror list.
“In the last 18 months, Boko Haram or associated militants have killed more than 1,000 people,” the State Department said in a statement, adding that Shekau was the most visible of the group’s leaders.
The two other men were accused of close links to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States.
“Under Shekau’s leadership, Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks in northern Nigeria, its primary area of operation,” the statement said, adding that most of the victims were “overwhelmingly civilian.”
The US designation blocks the men’s “property interests subject to US jurisdiction and prohibits US persons from engaging in transactions with or for the benefit of these individuals,” the statement added.
Boko Haram, which means “Western education is sin” in the Hausa language spoken in northern Nigeria, is believed to have a number of factions with differing aims, including some with political links and a hardcore Islamist cell.
Initially, the group said it was fighting for the creation of an Islamic state in the north of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and largest oil producer.
But a range of demands by different people have since been issued, including the release of its members from prison.
Boko Haram launched an uprising in 2009, leading to nearly a week of fighting that ended with a military assault that left some 800 people dead.
The group went dormant for more than a year before reemerging in 2010 with a series of assassinations. Bomb blasts, including suicide attacks, have since become frequent and increasingly deadly.
Just this week, Boko Haram claimed responsibility for suicide attacks on churches in Kaduna state on Sunday that left at least 16 people dead. They also sparked reprisals by Christian mobs against mosques and Muslims that killed dozens.
Frustration over the government’s inability to stop attacks by the group has triggered warnings that more residents could take the law into their own hands.
Shekau was once thought to have been killed, but re-emerged in January to lead the group from the shadows.
He appeared on YouTube at the time, threatening more attacks and saying Boko Haram was responsible for the January 20 violence that killed 185 people in Kano.
He was seen as the second-in-command of Boko Haram during a 2009 uprising. The leader at the time, Mohammed Yusuf, was captured by soldiers and handed over to police. Yusuf was later killed when police claimed he was trying to escape, though rights groups have called it a summary execution.
Born in a farming village also called Shekau in northeastern Yobe state, Shekau studied theology under local clerics in the Mafoni area of Maiduguri and enrolled in a government-run school for Islamic studies.
He is often shown in photos wearing a keffiyeh and seated next to an AK-47 assault rifle, appearing tense.

Farouk Lawan: Battling to save a threatened integrity

June ,2012

JOHN AMEH writes on the emergence of Mr. Farouk Lawan as a power broker in the House  of  Representatives and his current battle with a $3m bribery allegation

Yet, his concern captured the feeling of the majority of lawmakers over what has become the $3m bribery scandal reverberating in the House of Representatives.

One of the few to have survived from the 1999 set of legislators, Lawan until the latest bribery scam, was perceived by many to be above board.

Such was the confidence reposed in Lawan that when the House under the current leadership of Speaker Aminu Tambuwal, decided to tread the dangerous path of probing the fuel subsidy regime in the country, it entrusted Lawan with the headship of the Ad-Hoc Committee on the Management of Subsidy Regime last January.

 ‘Mr. Integrity’, as he was fondly called by some of his colleagues, did a good job of the investigation with the other seven panel members.

After sitting for over three months, the panel turned in a revealing report, exposing how the nation was defrauded to the tune of over N1.070trn in subsidy payments by an oil cartel comprising government agencies, marketers and portfolio contractors.

The subsidy probe appeared to be the icing on the cake for the instant hero, as lawmakers basked in the euphoria to consider and adopt the recommendations of the report.

However, just like the panel members were taken aback, lawmakers, perhaps, did not know that the celebrated legislator negotiated a $3m bribe with oil businessman, Mr. Femi Otedola.

 From his own admission to the police, he indeed collected $500,000 from Otedola, while the committee clerk, Mr. Boniface Emenalo, collected another $120,000. The two sums ($620,000) were a part payment of the total bribe package of $3m.

 While Lawan claimed it was to expose Otedola, who wanted his indicted firm, Zenon Oil and Gas Limited, off the hook, the business mogul told the world that he set up the politician for extorting money from him.

 The State Security Service, who coordinated the operation for Otedola, has video evidence in circulation, revealing what allegedly transpired between the two.

For the first time in a long while, the entire House came down so decisively against its own, axing Lawan. He was stripped of the chairmanship of the ad-hoc committee and suspended as chairman of the Committee on Education, as evidence that he took the bribe became believable.

Washing off its hands, the House also asked anti-graft agencies to conduct a thorough investigation into the allegation and punish any offender found culpable. In-house, Lawan will also be called to question by the Committee on Ethics and Privileges.

Lawan has come a long way. The diminutive Peoples Democratic Party lawmaker from Shanono/Bagwai Federal Constituency in Kano State, drove into the National Assembly premises in a Honda ’86 Honda Accord car in 1999.

The English Language graduate, who was born in 1962, was instrumental in exposing the certificate forgery scandal of the first speaker of the 1999 set, Mr. Salisu Buhari. The campaign against Buhari, successfully saw him being forced out of office, paving the way for Umar Ghali Na’Abba to mount the speaker’s saddle.

In 2002 when the House moved against former President Olusegun Obasanjo for alleged “abuse of power,” Lawan was one of the most vocal faces of the legislature. He gave Obasanjo sleepless nights until the impeachment threat was eventually dropped.

Lawan has been chairman of several standing committees and various ad-hoc panels, including the influential Committee on Appropriation and Committee on Information/Media. Since 2007, he was chairman of the Committee on Education until last week.

In 2007, Lawan again championed the anti-corruption crusade against a former Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Etteh, who granted anticipatory approval for N628m renovation/vehicle purchase contracts.

He formed a group, The Integrity Group, to champion the campaign to remove Etteh from office. Indeed, he won the sobriquet, Mr. Integrity, after the campaign that resulted in Etteh throwing in the towel on October 31, 2007.

Lawan, who by now had become a kingmaker of sort, almost single-handedly installed Etteh successor, Mr. Oladimeji Bankole as speaker. It was not surprising that during the Bankole years, the kingmaker was held in awe and his word was law.

The former lecturer and later, registrar of the Kano State Polytechnic, had his way on almost every issue in the House, both on the floor and off the floor. Bankole consulted him and took his advice regularly. His capacity to mobilise members was awesome and ignoring him would be at the peril of the leadership.

Yet, under Bankole’s leadership, Mr. Integrity’s track record began to receive a dent and there were posers as to whether he had been a double-faced legislator all these years.

Not long after he mounted the saddle, the Bankole leadership was enmeshed in a N2.4bn car purchase scam in 2008. Nigerians and members had looked up to the Integrity Group to move against Bankole, but strangely, Lawan lost his voice. There was no more steam. Rather, the group reportedly worked behind the scenes to clear the leadership of complicity in the scandal. The House later exonerated Bankole.

Still under Bankole, in June 2010, the House suspended 11 legislators led by Mr. Dino Melaye. Their offence? They were calling the leadership to account over the alleged mismanagement of N9bn of the House capital budget. The matter was swept under the carpet and there was no word from Mr. Integrity.

In 2011, the House unilaterally approved an increase in the quarterly allowances for members from N27.9m to N42m. The leadership was forced to procure a loan of about N40bn in order to sustain the “illegal” allowances.

Bankole and his deputy, Mr. Usman Nafada, later faced charges in court over the expenditure before the case was quashed. However, nothing was heard from Lawan at the time and he benefited from the illegal pay cheque.

Lawan is loved to be hated by many colleagues for being a schemer, opportunist, yet influential lone-ranger who is said to live in the self-belief that he has answers to everything.

In spite of his influence, most members of the committees he had chaired did not flow with him, but tagged along because of the lawmaker’s perceived high esteem among members and outside the House.

The schemer in Lawan showed in the run up to the election of the leadership of the seventh House, where Tambuwal emerged as the speaker on June 6, 2011.

Insiders said that Lawan and the PDP structure had an initial plan to scuttle Tambuwal’s emergence because the party had zoned the seat to the South-West.

He was to be the arrow head of the opposition to Tambuwal. He was to either contest the seat so as to split the votes of the majority from the North or to use his influence to mobilise support for the party’s candidate from the South-West.

Either way, the plan was to stop Tambuwal from being elected as the speaker.

However, when Lawan discovered that the pendulum in the House swung in favour of Tambuwal, he quickly retreated and abandoned the plan.

The smart Lawan wormed his way to the Tambuwal camp by encouraging members to vote for him.

To prove that he was now repentant, Lawan was the only member who openly displayed his voter’s card on June 1, showing that he voted for Tambuwal, before dropping it in the ballot box.

As in previous regimes, he steadily became a key figure under Tambuwal, a reason, coupled with his acclaimed integrity records, that he was entrusted with the headship of the fuel subsidy probe panel.

But, it seems this time around, the bubble has burst. Members now know better.

As the saying goes, there is a time when one’s cup is full. Is this Lawan’s nemesis? Is this the fall of Lawan?

One ex-lawmaker, who is still licking her wounds for crossing Lawan’s path is Etteh.

Hear the embittered former speaker, ““Now, Nigerians know who is corrupt and who is not. It is a big shame, it has further ridiculed the image of the House. Basically, what we read in the newspapers does not come as a surprise having had relationship with him for a very long time. He is the leader of the cartel.

“I did not steal any money. What happened when they were calling for my removal was a mere anticipatory spending, no money was missing. Dimeji Bankole, whom Farouk installed, spent over N400m to renovate his official quarters, which I wanted to renovate with just N40m, and sold it to himself for N100m.

“I was removed not for stealing money but three groups sacked me for their selfish reasons. The first group was led by Farouk Lawan, who was annoyed that he was not given the Appropriation Committee.

“The second group was the fundamentalists, who would not like to bow down to the authority of a woman and the third group believed that since the Senate President is a Christian, therefore, the Speaker must be a Muslim. All these groups joined forces together to fight me.