ATTENCAO

…I want to preface my intervention with a story I told sometimes in 1999 or thereabout which is still very relevant today. And like I did back then, I seek the indulgence of readers because the story is about a supposedly loving couple having problems which bordered on sex. The husband happened to be a man with healthy appetite hence he would not allow his wife any breathing space. After putting up with his antics for some years, she took the matter to her in-law as the ‘court of first instance’. After narrating her story, her mother-in-law asked whether her son was maltreating the wife in other ways; she said no. Was he providing for her as he should? She answered in the affirmative. The parents of the husband declared that the wife had no case because their son was only claiming his rightful entitlements. Case dismissed! Defeated, the poor woman accepted her fate for a while before reporting to her own parents. Let us call this the ‘court of appeal’. Here, they equally asked th...

The former chairman of the National Caretaker Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Ahmed Makarfi, has spoken on the possible reason for the loss of the chairmanship aspirants from the South-west at the party’s national convention. Five candidates from the region had withdrawn from the chairmanship race and adopted Prof. Tunde Adeniran as their consensus candidate. Adeniran later emerged second in the exercise with 231 votes, far behind the 2,000 votes garnered by Uche Secondus, the new chairman. Speaking on Channels TV Monday, Makarfi said the South-west never had a true consensus candidate for the chairmanship position. He also said a “damaging campaign” engineered by an unnamed individual rubbed off negatively on the region. “For the South-west, it was at the convention venue that they resolved on a consensus candidate. And even then, another candidate came to the state box and met the leaders and said, look they never resolved and that he was still in t...

Full disclosure in the administration of crude sales remains an issue at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) despite current efforts at enthroning transparency in the conduct of government business. An account reconciliation activity for crude oil transactions found gaps in the corporation’s reporting and remittances to the Federation Account for the month of October 2017. State governments had boycotted the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting on November 23, accusing the NNPC of cutting corners in reporting and remitting of receipts from oil in the period under review. The states insisted on thorough collation and reconciliation through representatives agreed upon by all the parties. The ensuing investigation and reconciliation uncovered the sum of N58.369 billion in unremitted funds and forced the state-owned company to issue fresh payment mandates to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to fund the Federation Account as well as the joint ventu...

For years, he was rejected at the polls and given a tag that demarketed him among the electorate. His opponents said they knew how to get people to vote against him — just dress him up in the uncomplimentary toga and voters would avoid him like a raging plague. He tried as much as he could to explain that what people were saying about him was not true. That did not change the minds of his critics. Anytime he announced his intention to become president of Nigeria, many would scoff and ask: what exactly does this man want? Why is he so desperate to become president? Is it a must? Can’t he just accept that Nigerians would never vote for him? But in 2015, everything changed. It was like a movie. The same Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, tagged as a religious bigot and dressed in the uncomplimentary toga of a jihadist for 12 years, suddenly became the darling of Nigerian voters outside his “core north” stronghold. The PDP stalwarts who said they knew how to win against him were shocked at the mo...

Uche Secondus has emerged as the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party  ( PDP) after he defeated three other aspirants with over 2000 votes. Below is the full list of new members of PDP NWC. Deputy National Chairman ( South); Yemi Akinwonmi- Ogun Deputy National Chairman ( North); Garba Gamawa- Bauchi National Secretary; Ibrahim Tsauri- Katsina Deputy National Secretary; Abubakar Mustapha National Treasurer; Aribisala Adewale- Ekiti Deputy National Treasurer; Wada Masu-Kano Financial Secretary; Abdullahi Maibasira- Niger Deputy Fin. Sec.; Irona Gerald-Imo National Organizing Secretary; Austin Akobundu- Abia Dep. Nat. Org. Sec.; Hassan Yakubu- Nasarawa Publicity Secretary; Kola Ologbondiyan- Kogi Dep. Nat. Pub. Sec.; Diran Odeyemi- Osun National Legal Adviser; Emmanuel Enoidem- Akwa Ibom Dep. Nat. Leg. Ads.; Ahmed Liman- Sokoto National Auditor; Adamu Mustapha-Yobe Dep. Nat. Auditor; Divine Arong National Woman Leader; Mariya Waziri-Kebbi Dep. Nat. Wo...

The redo edition of The Signature Summit closed in high spirits as participants, speakers and organizers took turns to have brief chats and pictures. The participants had earlier been drilled by experts on Branding and Digital Marketing skills in line with the event’s theme. The program, held at Ajose Lecture Theater, Obafemi Awolowo University- spread across two days, witnessed a conference session on Friday 24th November while a concluding workshop session followed on Saturday 25th November. Keynote speakers at the Friday conference included Author, Business Coach, Business Development Expert and Strategist, Tale Alimi and Digital Marketing Consultant, Deola Kayode while Art Director, Fericool Studios, Tunde Ogunkunle, Digital PR consultant at The Robert Taylor Media, Esther Odia, and CEO of Media Panache, Timilehin Bello oversaw practical sessions Saturday. Delivering ‘Perception is the new reality’, Tale Alimi said being a unique brand required the dualism of one’s big ...

Taking lessons from other parts of the world, Nigerians could make a unique headway of their own to strengthen the country's economy by identifying entrepreneurship as a window to shifting focus from government to the people. Having for the longer period made inputs to the instrument of government without concurrent gains, a strategic point has come to start considering and channeling efforts towards the alternative. The Signature Summit lays fundamental procedural groundwork in that direction - to  which those who attended its first edition on the 24th of February 2017, at the Cooperative Hall, Obafemi Awolowo University will attest. Signature NG, a creative, and multimedia (visual communication) agency, upon inquiry into mystery behind enterprise failure and decline in patronage presents an intervention in the form of The Signature Summit on a score - to turn the tide. Entrepreneurs take their feet off the pedal for reasons they would describe as ranging from limited res...

Question 1 – Let’s say your budget estimated you to earn N4trn from non-oil revenue in 2017 but in reality, you only managed to collect just over N2trn, how much should you budget to collect in 2018? The correct answer is N4.2trn. Question 2 – Let’s say you budget to earn N2.4trn from oil in 2018, how much of that should you spend on servicing your debts? The correct answer is N2trn. If these numbers don’t make sense to you, it’s because you don’t really understand how fiction works. Our existence on earth is in many ways restricted by rules we really have no control over. For example, we humans cannot fly (at least not yet) because the law of gravity truncates our hustle in that regard. But we can create a world on paper (and film) where the law of gravity does not exist, and human beings are thus able to fly. Fiction allows us to escape inconvenient or impossible rules. To be clear, this is not the only function of fiction – it also allows people say things that would be dang...

It has been confirmed that at the 55thOrdinary Session of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) which held in Monrovia, Liberia in December 2016, the Authority of Heads of States and Government of the member states of ECOWAS erroneously gave approval in principle to the request of the Kingdom of Morocco to join the sub-regional grouping. However, in view of the legal implications of the request the Authority has directed the ECOWAS Commission to examine the implications of Morocco’s membership of the ECOWAS within the ambit of the Revised Treaty of ECOWAS and to submit the results at the next session of the ECOWAS scheduled to hold in Lome, Togo in December, 2017 Having critically reviewed the Revised Treaty and other legal texts of the ECOWAS as well as the African Union we are of the firm view that Morocco is not legally qualified to join the sub regional economic union. However, before examining the legality of the request it is germane to expose the false clai...

With 19 months to the end of the term, those who still nurse some optimism about the Buhari government can only hope that it is not too late for the administration to fulfil the promises made to the people in 2015. This is not the first time that this reporter would suggest to Buhari to reboot. During the President’s first anniversary in office, the matter was put like this: ”To be sure, Buhari didn’t promise a magic or an El Dorado. But he told the people that he would tackle insecurity, fix the economy and fight corruption.” That statement still remains valid. A year later, the turn of events has proved the axiom that Buhari does not have eternity to reset the button of his administration to govern in the interest of the people. So what exactly are the prospects of a reboot of the 29-month old government of President Muhammadu Buhari? For the arch political opponents and even some not-so partisan pessimists, of course, the prospects are getting slimmer by the day. And the vie...

While “The Godfather” remains the most successful novel of Mario Puzo, his second mafia epic, published almost three decades later, “The Last Don”, is equally engrossing as he takes the reader into the inner recesses of Hollywood where licentiousness seems to be the order of the day. Even when a lot of things may have changed, especially within the past two decades since the novel was published, that was still the world inhabited by Mr Harvey Weinstein until the bubble burst with the scandal that may also have changed the entire power dynamic in which women are expected to offer sexual gratification to advance their professional career. It all started on 5th October, when two reporters with The New York Times, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, authored a story detailing how Weinstein, one of the most powerful American film producers, had, for three decades, been exploiting women in the movie business. He was specifically accused of sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape involvin...

Exactly a year ago, the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRCN), by its Establishment Act, tried to introduce a National Code of Corporate Governance. Had it not been suspended by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment a few months after it had come into effect, the three-in-one code sought to provide a new code of corporate governance for the private and public and sectors and not-for-profit organisations, including religious bodies. The code was all-encompassing and sought to unify, harmonise and would have superseded all the existing sectoral corporate governance codes in Nigeria such as those regulating licensed pension operators, banking, discount houses, telecommunications and insurance. But the minute it came into effect for the private sector and not-for-profit bodies, it hit a speed bump. It was rejected by the private sector for being in conflict with the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA), would have led to the exit of several CEOs who had spent more ...