Thursday, 12 February 2015

I’ve not endorsed any candidate -Obasanjo

FEBRUARY 12, 2015 BY ENIOLA AKINKUOTU

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo says contrary to reports, he has not yet endorsed any presidential candidate.

Obasanjo had said during an interview with the Financial Times at a book launch on Monday that he would support the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Maj.Gen Muhammadu Buhari (retd.).

He had said, “The circumstances he (Buhari) will be working under if he wins the elections are different from the one he worked under before, where he was both the executive and the legislature – he knows that. He is smart enough. He is educated enough. He’s experienced enough. Why shouldn’t I support him?”

The said endorsement was well received by the APC but condemned by leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party such as a former Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro; Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose and the National Chairman of the party, Adamu Mu’Azu.

However, Obasanjo said he supported Buhari but had not yet endorsed him.

He said, “I will not go into argument about that. I did not unendorse him or endorse him as such. A question was asked and I said I will determine, based on the track record of those candidates who are contesting and who ask me for support, and when I do that, based on my own assessment, I will support the candidate that I believe has the best track record. And I am still in the process of that.”

Curled from PUNCH

Dave Umahi and Battle For Ebonyi

Having outmaneuvered his principal to emerge the standard bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the 2015 gubernatorial election in Ebonyi State, Chief David Nweze Umahi has his work cut out for him. His political dexterity would however be put to a more severe test at the forthcoming elections, after the victory at the primaries where Governor Martin Elechi’s apparent endorsement of the former Health Minister, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu failed to stop him.

An accomplished Engineer and founder of Brass Engineering and Construction Company Limited, Dave Umahi is the current Deputy Governor of the state and has been a constant factor in Ebonyi politics from the onset of the current political dispensation in Nigeria. He had previously served as the State Chairman of the PDP before being selected by Governor Martin Elechi as his running mate in 2011.
In making that choice in 2011, Governor Martin Elechi had this to say: “ I realised that the system we are running requires in depth knowledge of the party system, party organisation, pros and the cons of the party, its direction and mechanics… and so I zeroed in on the person of the present party chairman, Chief Dave Umahi.” With hindsight, it seems that those strengths of his deputy, which he so keenly identified in selecting him to bolster his re-election bid, eventually botched his chances of imposing his preferred candidate as his successor.
Left licking his wounds, the governor had since moved his political structure to the Labour Party and aligned his support to their candidate, Edward Nkwegu from Ebonyi North (Old Abakaliki Zone). Pitching Edward Nkwegu, from the populous old Abakaliki Zone, against Umahi was aimed at checkmating Umahi and thwarting his ambitions by swinging votes in favour of the Labour Party.

However, despite all the drama, Dave Umahi is still waxing strong and remains the candidate to beat. The zonal arrangement is in his favour… that unwritten understanding that his zone, Ebonyi South should produce the next governor of the state as Ebonyi North and Ebonyi Central have had their turns at the Government House. Umahi’s wealth of experience and grassroot support also puts him heads and shoulders above any other candidate. Equally, he is seen by his people, as a man with the vision and capacity to move the state forward.
The incumbent governor’s dalliance with the Labour Party notwithstanding, it would be foolhardy for the PDP to lose a key state like Ebonyi, that has proven to be a traditional stronghold of the party. The influence of political heavyweights in the state, notably, the former Senate President and current Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Pius Anyim and the former State Governor and current Ebonyi North Senatorial candidate, Sam Egwu would also go a long way to galvanise support for Umahi.

As the April 11 date for the gubernatorial election draws close, the candidates are slugging it out in the trenches, canvassing for votes in every nook and cranny of the state. The fierce battle for the heart of Ebonyi rages on, as analysis and permutations can all go wrong if the little details are taken for granted.

Kene Okoye,
Lagos

Tags: Politics, Nigeria, Featured, Dave Umahi, Ebony 2015 Election

2015 polls: Jonathan dismisses threats of war

President Goodluck Jonathan on Wednesday in Abuja dismissed threats of war from some quarters of the country over the outcome of the 2015 general elections.

Jonathan, who fielded questions from newsmen at the presidential media chat, said that anarchy would not be condoned in Nigeria as the country was bigger than the interest of any individual.

According to him, journalists also have a duty in defusing tension in the polity through their reportage. The president reacted to a question that the Niger-Delta ex-agitators had threatened that there would be war if he lost the 2015 polls. “We cannot destroy this country and we cannot encourage anybody who wants to destroy this country.”

On the war against insurgency and securing the release of the kidnapped Chibok girls, he expressed optimism that the synergy with neighbouring countries would yield positive results. He said that the Federal Government had acquired weapons from some countries which would help in the prosecution of the war against insurgents.

- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/02/2015-polls-jonathan-dismisses-threats-war/?#sthash.BfiB95Jg.dpuf

INVESTIGATION: The Mystery Man of Nigeria’s $182million Halliburton Bribery Scam

By Musikilu Mojeed

Who is Abu Shuaibu?

That is a question reporters from PREMIUM TIMES and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists have battled for months to unravel. They haven’t succeeded.

The man’s name keeps popping up like mushrooms in the leaked records from HSBC, a huge global bank based in London, which has now been exposed for its role in acting as conduit for bribes and other illicit businesses.

Just plug in Jeffrey Tesler into the data, obtained by the French newspaper Le Monde and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and Mr. Shuaibu’s name will rush to the surface.

Mr. Tesler is the U.K. lawyer, who used a network of secretive banks and offshore tax havens to funnel $182 million in bribes to top Nigerian officials in exchange for a $6 billion contract to build Nigeria’s liquefied natural gas company.

The leaked file show strong financial ties between Mr. Tesler and Mr. Shuaibu, and suggested both, along with other Nigerian individuals, corporations and at least a political party, may have worked together while the U.K. lawyer was engaged in the infamous bribery scheme.

The HSBC files identify Mr. Shuaibu, along with retired General Chris Garuba (a former governor of Bauchi State, former Commandant of the National War College, and former Commander of UN forces in Angola) and his wife Rita, as HSBC clients.

Their names are listed along with Mr. Tesler’s in an account named Bridlington Enterprises Limited, a Gibraltar-based shell company for which Mr. Tesler acted as attorney.

The records show that the account, for which Mr. Shuaibu was identified as beneficial owner, was opened the year before Mr. Tesler sent his first bribe payment to Switzerland, although the files do not show that Mr. Tesler transferred money into the Bridlington account, which held as much as $367,547 in 2006 or 2007.

But while Messrs Tesler, Chris and Rita Garuba are well known, very little is known about Mr. Shuaibu, although bank documents identify him as a real estate dealer and consistently gave his address as P.O. Box 53322, Ikoyi WAN-Lagos.

Yet it was the 65-year-old who effectively ran Bridlington’s accounts, repeatedly visiting HSBC in Switzerland, and making several withdrawals in cash. On one occasion – on November 11, 2005 – he visited the bank to request a transfer of 600,000 U.S. dollars. It is not clear to whom the money was sent.

The leaked files have provided fresh insight into Nigerians who worked with or had link with Mr. Tesler while he wired bribes to Nigerian officials.

Investigators in Nigeria and the United States, who investigated what is now infamously known as the Halliburton bribery scam, were unable to identify Mr. Shuaibu, the Garubas and another individual, Andrew Agom (a senior government official and chieftain of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, (who was killed in an attack on a motorcade), as business associates of Mr. Tesler.

But the HSBC files have clearly established the financial links between the individuals.

However, our efforts in the past months to track down Mr. Shuaibu or establish his real identity have so far been unsuccessful. The Abu Shuaibus we ended up identifying and contacting turned out to be different from that of Mr. Tesler’s record.

The Garubas, who could have provided a clue – since they shared ownership of Bridlington with him – did not respond to requests for comments by ICIJ and PREMIUM TIMES.

At 6.25p.m. on Wednesday, February 11, Rita, who runs the Abuja-based law firm, Temple Chambers, answered the phone but abruptly terminated the call after listening to our enquiry. She did not answer subsequent calls.

Mr. Tesler too did not respond to ICIJ’s requests for comment.

Mr. Tesler was sentenced to 21 months in prison and he forfeited $149 million from his Swiss accounts to the U.S. government for serving as the go-between for bribes paid to secure contracts for KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary, and the other consortium members, the Japanese firm JGC Corporation, Paris-based Technip, as well as Italy’s ENI S.p.A. and its Dutch subsidiary Snamprogetti Netherlands B.V.

The forfeited money is still to be paid.

Between 2009 and 2011, the consortium members paid penalties totaling more than $1.5 billion for their role in the bribery scheme. Two KBR officials who had worked with Mr. Tesler, Wojciech Chodan and Albert (Jack) Stanley, KBR’s former chairman and CEO, were sentenced to one year of probation and 30 months in prison, respectively.
Dick Cheney.

Mr. Cheney had been chairman and chief executive of Halliburton, the parent company of KBR, for five years — from 1995 to 2000 — before becoming U.S. vice-president in 2001.

Mr. Cheney’s lawyer has asserted repeatedly that his client was not involved. “The Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission investigated that joint venture extensively and found no suggestion of any impropriety by Dick Cheney in his role of CEO of Halliburton,” attorney Terrence O’Donnell wrote in a 2010 statement to the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, Tesler, now 66, has served his sentence and returned to England, where he told authorities he would “spend the last few years, which God may graciously grant me, to seek forgiveness.”

In Nigeria, anti-corruption campaigners continue to call on authorities to identify and prosecute Nigerian citizens involved in the scandal. While never publicly released, a 2010 Nigerian government document reportedly included three Nigerian presidents, a vice-president, a minister, intelligence chiefs and corporate titans in a list of bribery beneficiaries. The report did not name the Garubas, and Messrs Agom and Shuaibu.

“In terms of the personalities and the amount of money involved, it is probably the biggest scandal in Nigeria’s history,” Dauda Garuba, Nigeria coordinator at the Natural Resource Governance Institute, said in an interview with ICIJ. (Dauda Garuba has no connection to the Garuba family in the HSBC files.)

“But although we’ve seen the indictment and conviction of foreign companies and their top executives in Europe and America,” Mr. Garuba said, “Nigeria’s own government has not taken action in the very country in which the corruption took place.”

If you have any information about Abu Shuaibu, please contact PREMIUM TIMES through newsroom@premiumtimesng.com

Contributors to this story: Will Fitzgibbon

Baby Born Pregnant with Her Own Twins

Hong Kong baby born pregnant with her own twins

FEBRUARY 12, 2015 BY LIVE SCIENCE 2 COMMENTS

A baby born in Hong Kong was pregnant with her own siblings at the time of her birth, according to a new report of the infant’s case.

The baby’s condition, known as fetus-in-fetus, is incredibly rare, occurring in only about 1 in every 500,000 births. It’s not clear exactly why it happens.

Fetus

“Weird things happen early, early in the pregnancy that we just don’t understand,” said Dr. Draion Burch, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Pittsburgh, who goes by Dr. Drai. “This is one of those medical mysteries.”

The World Health Organization considers a tiny fetus found within an infant to be a kind of teratoma, or tumor, rather than a normally developing fetus.

But the doctors who treated the baby girl wrote that rather than a teratoma, the tiny fetuses may instead be the remains of sibling twins that were absorbed during the pregnancy.

The newborn baby was referred to Dr. Yu Kai-man, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Hong Kong, because the baby was suspected to have a tumor, according to the case report. The mother’s prenatal ultrasound had revealed an unusual mass within the infant, but it was unclear to the doctors exactly what the mass was. During surgery, which was done when the girl was about 3 weeks old, the surgeons discovered two fetuses between her liver and her kidney.

One fetus weighed 0.3 ounces (9.3 grams) and the other 0.5 ounces (14.2 grams) — corresponding to about 8 and 10 weeks’ gestation, the case report said.

Each of the babies had an umbilical cord that linked to a placenta-like mass in the girl’s belly.

The baby girl was obviously too young to have conceived the fetuses herself. Instead, it’s likely that the girl was once one of triplets, the researchers said. Then, for some mysterious reason, the two smaller fetuses were absorbed into the body of the remaining child.

The fetuses would likely have still been alive and growing when they were absorbed into the surviving baby’s body. Once there, however, their development couldn’t proceed normally, Burch said.

“They need placental flow and all that other stuff to really grow,” Burch told Live Science.

Fetus-in-fetu may, in fact, be similar to a surprisingly common phenomenon: vanishing twin syndrome, Burch said. In many twin pregnancies, one of the twins is completely absorbed and “vanishes” into the body of the other.

“When you do a delivery and you see an extra placenta and a cord, you say, ‘Oh, it must have been a twin,'” Burch said.

Fetus-in-fetus has been reported in about 200 cases in the medical literature. In 2006, doctors in Pakistan removed two fetuses from a 2-month-old girl named Nazia, according to NBC News. And in 2011, an 18-year-old boy had his retained twin removed in a major surgery, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported.

In rare instances, fetuses that die in utero can become calcified and turn into stone. In August 2014, doctors in India removed a lithopedion, orstone baby, that a 60-year-old woman had carried in her body for 36 years. She went to the doctor complaining of abdominal pain and a lump in her lower belly.

Naira on Devaluation Path as Nigeria Bid Fails: Chart of the Day

(Bloomberg) -- Nigeria is poised to devalue the naira after central bank efforts failed to stem the currency’s plunge to a record versus the dollar, according to Exotix Partners LLP.

The CHART OF THE DAY shows that the rate at which the naira trades in the interbank market weakened to the widest gap on record against the official auction value this week, prompting the Central Bank of Nigeria to use dwindling reserves to maintain its target range for the currency. That isn’t sustainable, according to Stuart Culverhouse, chief economist at Exotix, which specializes in frontier-market investments.

“It’s just a question of waiting for devaluation,” Culverhouse said by phone from London on Wednesday. “The overwhelming signal” is that the official rate would have to be adjusted closer to prices in the market, he said.

The naira, Africa’s worst-performing currency this year, slumped to more than 200 per dollar for the first time on Tuesday after the West African nation postponed elections scheduled for Feb. 14 by six weeks. Investors are delaying decisions to commit money to Nigeria amid escalating violence by the Islamist group Boko Haram in the country’s northeastern region and the collapse in crude prices, which is cutting government revenue for Africa’s biggest oil producer.

Nigeria’s central bank depleted foreign-exchange reserves to a three-year low in a bid to defend the naira with dollar sales. In November, policy makers weakened the midpoint of the official exchange rate, which is set at twice-weekly central bank currency auctions, to 168 per dollar from 155 and raised the benchmark borrowing cost to a record 13 percent to stem losses in the currency. The interbank rate is the price at which banks buy and sell the currency.

To contact the reporter on this story: Simbarashe Gumbo in Johannesburg atsgumbo3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Vernon Wessels atvwessels@bloomberg.net Robert Brand, Vernon Wessels, Paul Dobson

No plan to sack Jega – Jonathan

President Goodluck Jonathan on Wednesday said although he has the powers to fire the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Attahiru Jega, he is not contemplating doing so.

He stated this during the Presidential Media Chat in response to reports that the Presidency was plotting to sack the INEC Chairman based on the calls by some supporters of Mr. Jonathan who are accusing Mr. Jega of bias.

The president did not however mention the provision of the constitution that empowers him to sack Mr. Jega.

Mr. Jega had on Saturday announced a reschedule of the presidential and national assembly elections from February 14 to March 28 and the governorship and state assembly elections from February 28 to April 11.

He hinged the postponement on the security challenges in the north east zone, saying the military and the security agencies had informed the commission that they would not be available to provide security in that zone.

It is believed in some quarters that the Commission was forced to take the step because Mr. Jonathan’s party, the Peoples Democratic Party, as well as some of the president’s sympathisers no longer had confidence in Mr. Jega’s leadership.

However, responding to a question from a four-member panel of interviewers on whether he was planning to remove Mr. Jega, the president, who is also the PDP presidential candidate in the now rescheduled election, said most of the information being spread about the issue did not emanate from him.

Wishing that Mr. Jega was there to answer the question, Mr. Jonathan however explained that in politics, the campaign leadership and supporters of particular candidates could post any information online without the knowledge of such politician.

INEC chairman Attahiru Jega

He stated that some people had been using the opportunity presented by the postponement of the polls to misinform the public.

“One thing about politics and leadership generally, when you are leader, let us say when you are governor you have a number of people who support you but you don’t even know what they do or what they say,” he said.

“Maybe somebody has been making statements about something the assumption is that because that person supports you or they are your fans and some of them are fans of other candidates, it is assumed that you said so.”

The president said he appointed all the INEC national commissioners and the Resident Electoral Commissioners on the strength of the constitution and that if he felt Mr. Jega was not good enough for obvious reason, he could ask him to go.

“I have not told anybody that I am going to remove Jega. I have not said so. You see some of these things are creation by people for one interest or the other,” he said.

Mr. Jonathan said some people are cashing in on the postponement of the elections to misinform Nigerians.

He said he was saddened by the misinformation being dished out to young Nigerians.

Hoodlums Attack Man For Pasting Political Posters In Lagos

By Gbenupo Cadmus on Wednesday, February 11, 2015 | No comments

Some hoodlums have attacked a man, Mr. Disu Omobolaji, in the Ipaja Ayobo area of

Lagos State for pasting campaign posters by the roadside. PUNCH Metro learnt that Omobolaji, who

worked as a photographer, was attacked

Mr. Disu Omobolaji, in receiving treatmen

along with two other persons while they

were pasting the campaign posters around

the Post Office bus stop on Ipaja Ayobo

Road.

It was learnt that while the two other men

escaped from the hoodlums, Omobolaji was

unlucky as the miscreants hacked him with

axes and cutlasses.

Our correspondent gathered that the attack

occurred on Tuesday, February 3, at about

7.30pm.

It was learnt that Omobolaji, who sustained injuries, immediately went to the IpajaPolice Division to report the incident before

going to a private hospital in the area for treatment.

When PUNCH Metro visited the hospital on Monday, Omobolaji, who said he was the financial secretary of the youth wing of the All Progressives Congress in the Ayobo Ipaja Local Council Development Area, told our correspondent that his attackers had the intention of killing him. He added that the hoodlums also carted away the posters and removed the ones that had been pasted.

He said, "I and two other APC youth members in our area were at the bus stop to paste some posters. The posters were of the party's governorship candidate, Akinwunmi Ambode. As we embarked on the task, the hoodlums appeared and pounced on us. "While the others fled, I tried to find out what the thugs wanted. They did not say anything, but started to hit me with axes and cutlasses. I managed to escape after sustaining injuries."I had gone to report at the police station and I hope the police would apprehend the hoodlums." Another victim of the attack in the area, Mrs. Bisi Makanjuola, showed our correspondent her damaged vehicle, urgingthe police to curtail the activities of the miscreants.

She said, "These hoodlums are not really members of any party. They are jobless and walk around with weapons waiting to be hired by any politician or party to foment trouble. "My vehicle was actually shot at several times, but I managed to escape. "I cannot take the vehicle home so that they will not trace me with it." The Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Kenneth Nwosu, said, he wouldget back to our correspondent. He,

however, had not called back as of press

time.