The battle for Kaduna Government House, North West of the country has begun as one of the aspirants, Isa Mohammed Ashiru picked his nomination form on Wednesday to contest the gubernatorial primaries under the People’s Democratic Party .
The first to purchase the form, Ashiru is seen by political observers as one of the top contenders in the race and who was enthusiastic about the party delegates conference scheduled for September 17th 2018.
Speaking to newsmen in Kaduna ,a member of the Central Planning Committee of the Ashiru Campaign Organisation, Godfrey Gaiya, said, the purchase of the form was to demonstrate his seriousness about the project,.
“It is also to encourage his supporters and affirm to delegates how important and determined he is, to lead the party to a resounding victory in the 2019 gubernatorial elections,” he said.
It could be recalled that Ashiru had toured 22 of thr 23 LGA offices of the PDP in Kaduna state where he was said to have been accorded resounding receptions and endorsement by delegates.
The Gubernatorial Aspirant who has been speaking on his political sojourn, said being one of the founding fathers of the PDP in Kaduna state, the sojourn in the APC, his former party, helped him see that a reformed PDP was the best option for him and Nigeria.
Israel’s Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman described Iran on Friday as having slowed down its long-term force deployment in Syria.
He attributed the slow down to Israeli military intervention as well as an economic crisis gripping Tehran as U.S. sanctions are restored.
Israel, which monitors neighbouring Syria intensively, has long alleged that Iran came to assist the Damascus government in Syria’s civil war in part to set up a permanent garrison there, including advanced missile factories and air and naval bases.
The Israelis have carried out scores of air strikes in Syria targeting suspected arms and troop movements by Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas it sponsors.
The Israeli actions have been mostly ignored by Russia, Damascus’ big-power backer.
“The Iranians have reduced the scale of their activity in Syria,” Lieberman said in an interview published by Israel’s top-selling Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.
He said there was “no activity, at this stage’’ in Iranian efforts to build missile production factories on Syrian soil.
“Nor have they built a port in Syria, and they have no airport there, but they have not abandoned the idea. They are continuing to negotiate with the Assad government on the creation of garrison outposts in Syria,’’ Lieberman added.
“The main reason for why this has stopped is the result of our daily, hard work in Syria.’’
Iran, Israel’s arch-enemy in the Middle East, has been a core supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad throughout the 7-year war, sending military advisers as well as materiel and regional Shi’ite militias that it backs.
This week, Iranian Defence Minister Amir Hatami visited Damascus and said the Islamic Republic would maintain its presence in Syria.
The countries had signed a pact for defence cooperation, including restoring Syria’s military industries.
Yedioth asked Lieberman whether Iran’s conduct in Syria was linked to its economic crisis, precipitated by the restoration of U.S. sanctions after President Donald Trump exited world powers’ 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran.
“Obviously there is heavy economic pressure on them. The budget for Iranian forces in the Middle East was 2 billion dollars, and even today less money is going to Syria and Hezbollah,” he said.
“I believe that when the second stage of the American economic sanctions starts, on Nov. 4, the situation will get worse,’’ he added, predicting that reduced funding for Hezbollah meant it “will not be able to exist in its current format’’.
A senatorial aspirant on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Austin Ovuigwerie Orette has promised to attract federal presence and foreign investment to Delta South.
He also promised to create better opportunities for the people.
“Are the people much better now than they were eight years ago? Some of the aspirants belong to the past and bringing them back is like putting old wine in a new bottle” he said.
Orette spoke about his readiness to represent the people of Delta South and what he calls poor performance.
“I’m in the race to free the people. I’m interested in solving problems. I’ll be Delta South Senator in 2019. I need to serve the people” he said.
He also spoke on the issue of zoning in the senatorial district.
“You don’t zone what you don’t have”
Giving an insight into his blue print, Orette said he would spread the dividends of democracy to all nooks and crannies of the senatorial zone.
“Politics is about service. It is about empowering the people and developing the area. It is not about accumulating wealth” the graduate from the Medical School of the University of Nigeria said.
“We have a lot of problems in the senatorial district.”
He promised to focus on security, health care, economy, education, infrastructure and youth employment.
“Delta South needs someone that can solve problems.”
Orette is not kidding about his aspiration.
Currently in America to sharpen his arsenal which he is expected to fire from all cylinders in the next couple of days, the Isoko born politician said “what I’m aspiring for is very near to my reach”
“We need someone with fresh ideas? We need someone that can fight against evils that hold back development. You don’t have to recycle old leaders.”
Orette accused the tycoons of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) of shutting down the opportunities, starving the people and using stolen funds to enslave them.
He called on the people to support his senatorial ambition.
“Take your rightful place, choose the right people who will reconstruct what has been destroyed by some individuals in the state” he said.
He also praised President Muhammadu Buhari for sanitising the system.
Zamfara state government has condemned the incidents of attacks on journalists in the country as members of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Zamfara state Council on Thursday joined their counterparts across the country to protest against maltreatment and injustice against journalists.
Leading the peaceful protest in Gusau, the Zamfara state capital, the acting Chairman of the Council, Comrade Abubakar Ahmed lamented that journalists suffers in the hands of security agents, politicians and political thugs among others.
He said as a matter of urgency, the ugly situation must be reversed as the journalists are carrying out their legitimate duties and need not to be maltreated.
Comrade Ahmed also presented a Letter of Protest to President Muhammadu Buhari, titled, “PROTECTION OF JOURNALISTS”, to the Zamfara state acting governor, Malam Ibrahim Wakkala Muhammad.
Ahmed said the protest was in response to the directive of the national secretariat of the union to all state councils to carry out the peaceful protest in order to create awareness on the hazards faced by media practitioners in the country.
Receiving the letter, Wakkala condemned in strong terms unnecessary harassment and detention of journalists by security agents the country.
The Zamfara state acting governor who was represented by the State Commissioner of Information, Sanda Danjari Kotarkoshi, said that harassment on journalists by security agents constitute serious threat to development of democracy.
“it is unfortunate to see that despite the important role journalists play in improving our society and checking excesses, some people feel threatened and so harass, intimidate and use their powers to deny the journalists from carrying out their legitimate duties”, he said.
Wakkala expressed satisfaction with the way and manner journalists conduct themselves in the state.
“We thank God that in Zamfara however, we have, especially under the present leadership of Governor Abdulaziz Yari, maintained a cordial working relationship with practising journalists which have yielded positive results to the development of the state,” he said.
The acting governor who promised to deliver the letter to the President Muhammadu Buhari appealed to Nigerians to always see journalists as partners in progress.
MTN Group shares plunged as much as 23 per cent to a nine year low on Thursday, a day after Nigeria ordered the telecoms group to repatriate $8.1 billion illegally sent abroad.
At trading on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, MTN shares were down 21.4 per cent at 84.35 rand, after touching 83 rand, a level last seen in 2009.
Nigeria’s central bank said the funds had been illegally moved abroad because the company’s bankers had failed to verify MTN had met all the foreign exchange regulations.
MTN denies the allegations.
The demand by Nigeria’s central bank is the latest setback for MTN in Nigeria, the South African group’s most lucrative but increasingly also its most problematic market.
It comes two years after MTN, Africa’s biggest telecoms company, agreed to pay more than 1 billion dollars to end a dispute in Nigeria over unregistered SIM cards.
The case underlines the risks of MTN’s strategy to operate in emerging markets, a move that has made it one of post-apartheid South Africa’s biggest commercial success stories, with operations in more than 20 countries.
The money is more than half of MTN’s market capitalisation, and analysts said the demand risked further undermining Nigeria’s efforts to shake off an image as a risky frontier market for international investors.
The crux of the allegation is that MTN used improperly issued certificates to convert shareholders’ loans in its Nigerian unit to preference shares in 2007.
Nigeria said that due to conversion, dividends paid by MTN Nigeria to the parent company between 2007 and 2015 – amounting to 8.1 billion dollars – were illegal, and should be returned.
MTN said in a statement, “No dividends have been declared or paid by MTN Nigeria other than pursuant to certificates of capital importation issued by our bankers and with the approval of the CBN (Central Bank of Nigeria) as required by law.”
“One wonders why this wasn’t brought to MTN’s attention years ago.
“You just can’t do business in an environment where these type of things are going to happen,” said Greg Davies of boutique investment house Cratos Capital in Johannesburg.
Nigeria’s central bank also fined four banks, including Standard Bank’s unit in Nigeria, Stanbic IBTC, for their role in moving the money out of Africa’s biggest economy.
On Wednesday, the central bank said it had fined Stanbic IBTC N1.8 billion (6 million dollars) for violations of foreign exchange transactions rules and ordered that it return 2.6 billion dollars it repatriated on behalf clients, including MTN.
Standard Bank, said in a statement, its unit was “not a beneficiary of any of the remittances made on behalf of clients and denies any imputation of malfeasance.”
Hillary Clinton’s private server was reportedly hacked by the Chinese, who supposedly gained access to virtually all of her emails, according to The Daily Caller’s sources. Speaking to Radio Sputnik, Charles Ortel, a political analyst, private investor and writer shared his views on the Clinton email saga.
Sputnik:In your view, how big is this story and how much attention has it been receiving in Western media?
Charles Ortel: There’s a lot of information actually in the public domain that the mainstream press has refused to cover, and that gives you and your listeners the benefit of some hard links. So we have in the United States something called the FBI vault. And that is run by our FBI and it is an online service that puts out information concerning past investigations that it feels the public ought to know about. Any member of the global audience can access this FBI vault. If you punch in, in google, FBI vault and Hillary R. Clinton, you will get to a 24-part release, thousands of pages of documents.
The first part summarizes an investigation that began, the official FBI investigation that began on July 10, 2015 into the mishandling by Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin and others of classified information. Hillary and her team are fond of dissembling and fond of trying to argue that what happened in 2015 and 2016 was part of a normal security review into the past practices of all secretaries of state. It was a formal process, the timeline began in March 2015 and that sparked enormous interest in the Senate and triggered ultimately an investigation by the inspector general of the intelligence community. All this is summarized briefly and this has been known by the FBI. Then in multiple additional documents this is a monstrous story.
It has been picked up and investigated by the inspector general at the Department of Justice, Mr. Horowitz, who issued a report earlier this year. In that report, flagged by Congressman Louie Gohmert, was a sentence that said “Another foreign power had gained access to all of Hillary Clinton’s emails via the private servers and unsecured devices.” You know, if somebody is going to be as sloppy as Hillary Clinton and her team was handling our most precious secrets over private servers and unsecured devices, I’ve got a belief that many rival countries, to put it politely, and maybe even allies including, perhaps, the UK and maybe Israel, other state actors, non-state actors want to look at this golden prize, this platinum prize of 100-percent of America’s top international secrets being handled on two unsecured servers and multiple unsecured devices. It’s an obvious thing to try to hack.
Sputnik: What do you make of the timing of this report?
Charles Ortel: This a really, if you want to pick a dead week in the United States, this is one of the deadest weeks. This is the last week before, you know, our summer vacations officially end. To get a lot of attention you might have to wait until Tuesday of next week.
Sputnik: Of course Trump joked that this time it was the Chinese that hacked Hillary’s emails rather than the Russians. Do you think it’s another attempt to shift the blame for Clinton’s loss in the elections to a third party and why would he do that?
Charles Ortel: I honestly think that the mainstream press, the corporate globalist mainstream press in the United States, and Western Europe, and Japan, and elsewhere has committed, you know, malpractice in the way they’ve covered this. There is a lot of evidence out there that shows that Hillary Clinton and her people rigged the primary season; Hillary Clinton, I think history will show this already, was a horrible candidate.
China Africa Bilateral Trade Diagram (photo: Business Trumpet)
China AFrica Bilateral Trade Diagram (photo: Business Trumpet)
The Consul-General of China in Lagos, Mr Chao Xiaoliang, on Thursday said the volume of trade between China and Africa from January to July this year now stand at about N4.17 trillion ($116 billion).
Chao, in an article entitled, “Working Together to Write a New Chapter in China-Africa Relations’’, also announced China’s readiness to host this year’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) Summit in Beijing.
“The Chinese government has since 2010 continued to maintain its position as Africa’s largest trading partner.
“In 2017, the volume of trade transacted between China and Africa is about N6.12 trillion ($170 billion).
“Trade volume between China and Africa in the first seven months of this year reached N.17 trillion ($116 billion),’’ he said.
Chao also said that China’s total non-financial investment in Africa last year was over N3.6 trillion ($100 billion).
According to him, there are currently about 3,200 Chinese companies’ investment in Africa’s transportation, energy, telecommunications, industrial zones, agricultural technology centres, water supply, schools and health sectors.
He said China has so far trained more than 16,200 African technicians and provided over 43,000 training opportunities in China and 20,000 government scholarships for Africans.
On the summit, Chao disclosed that it is scheduled hold from Sept. 3 and Sept. 4 in Beijing, adding that the summit will bring together China and African leaders for a renewed friendship and cooperation.
The Chinese Envoy said President Muhammadu Buhari, other leaders of African countries, Chairperson of the African Union Commission would lead delegations to the summit.
“The FOCAC Beijing Summit is another reunion for the big family of China and Africa.
“It is going to be the largest home-field diplomatic activity attended by foreign leaders after the Beijing Summit in 2006 and that of Johannesburg Summit in 2015,’’ he said.
The consul-general said that FOCAC was first established in 2000 as a mechanism for collective dialogue and multilateral cooperation between China and Africa.
MTN Nigeria on Thursday refuted the claims by the Central Bank of Nigeria that it illegally, in collusion with four Nigerian banks repatriated $8.1billion from its Nigerian operations to offshore investors.
The CBN said the remittances between 2007 and 2015, in tranches of of 2.63 billion dollars, 1.766 billion dollars and 348 million dollars were done in flagrant violation of the rule that says it can only be done with regular ‘Certificates of Capital Importation (CCIs)’ issued by the apex bank.
The CBN said MTN did the repatriation after illegally converting shareholders’ loan of $399, 594,146 to preference shares.
As part of the sanctions, four banks, Stanbic IBTC Nigeria, Citibank Nigeria and Diamond Bank Plc, were fined by the CBN.
Standard Chartered Bank would pay a fine of N2.47 billion, Stanbic IBTC, N1.88 billion, Citibank Nigeria, N1.26 billion and Diamond bank, N250 million.
Mr Funso Aina, Public Relations Manager, Corporate Affairs/Corporate Relations MTN denied the claims by the CBN
“MTN Nigeria received a letter on Aug 29 from Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) alleging that Certificate of Capital Important (CCIs) issued in respect of the conversion of shareholders’ loans in MTN Nigeria to preference shares in 2007 had been improperly issued.
`As a consequence they claim that historic dividends repatriated by MTN Nigeria between 2007 and 2015 amounting to $8.1 billion need to be refunded to the CBN.
“MTN Nigeria strongly refutes these allegations and claims.
“No dividends have been declared or paid by MTN Nigeria other than pursuant to CCIs issued by our bankers and with the approval of the CBN as required by law,” he said.
Aina said that the issues surrounding the CCIs had already been the subject of a thorough enquiry by the Senate of Nigeria.
He added that in September 2016 the Senate mandated the Committee on Banking, Insurance and other Financial Institutions to carry out a holistic investigation on compliance with the Foreign exchange (monitoring and miscellaneous) Act by MTN Nigeria & Others.
He said that in its report issued in November 2017, the findings evidenced that MTN Nigeria did not collude to contravene the foreign exchange laws and there were no negative recommendations made against MTN Nigeria.
“MTN Nigeria, as a law-abiding citizen of Nigeria, is committed to good governance and to abide by the extant laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“The re-emergence of these issues is regrettable as it damages investor confidence and, by extension, inhibits the growth and development of the Nigerian economy.
“We will engage with the relevant authorities and vigorously defend our position on this matter and provide further information when available.
CBN’s spokesperson, Isaac Okorafor, said the apex bank has written MTN Nigeria demanding a refund of the $8.13 billion, repatriated.
The Bank resolved to sanction the commercial banks following investigations in March 2018, which confirmed allegations of remittance of foreign exchange with irregular Certificates of Capital Importation (CCIs) issued on behalf of some offshore investors of MTN Nigeria.
