Today, August 19, 2015, major dailies across Nigeria are focusing on a number of issues, from President Buhari probing the sale of NITEL, to dissolving the executive management team of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON).
A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dr. Cairo Ojougboh has accused the former secretary to the government of the federation (SGF) Anyim Pius Anyim of unilaterally acquiring the multi-billion-dollar Centenary City on the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport Road, Abuja, The Nation reports.
The Nation front page, August 19, 2015.
According to the PDP’s national vice chairman (Southsouth zone), Anyim, a former Senate president, persuaded former President Goodluck Jonathan to sign the Centenary City documents without him reading the contents or consulting his advisers.
He said Jonathan was not part of the fraud as he was not properly briefed and thought it was for the good of all Nigerians because of the centenary spirit. Unknown to him, it was the private project of the former SGF and his cohorts.
Ojougboh explained that the original landlords demanded compensation from the federal government, “but the sponsors of the project used a private firm to pay them N1.2 billion.”
He therefore called on President Muhammadu Buhari to probe transactions relating to Centenary City, stating the facts relating to the transaction and the role played by Anyim in what he described as “a scam” perpetrated by a United Arab Emirates company, allegedly operating as a front for Anyim.
The Punch reports that some ‘super rich’ civil servants in the Federal Capital Territory have started selling off their choice houses and state-of-the-art automobiles to avoid losing them to the President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption war.
Reportedly the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) has already confiscated some buildings said to have been owned by public servants whose earnings are believed to be insufficient to warrant their owning such properties.
The Punch front page, August 19, 2015.
It was gathered on Tuesday, August 18, that some financially buoyant buyers have begun purchasing the properties, and the sale of properties in Abuja since the new administration came to power had increased by about 30 per cent.
According to real estate agents in the FCT, the increase in sales could be attributed to the recent probes of government officials and the resultant confiscation of their properties by the ICPC, adding that some private individuals had started consulting real estate agents, requesting assistance in disposing of their properties.
Meanwhile, President Buhari has ordered the Ministry of Communication Technology to prepare a memo on the liquidation process of Nigerian Telecommunication Limited (NITEL) and its subsidiary, Mobile Telecommunication Ltd (MTEL) by the government of his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, Daily Sun reports.
Daily Sun front page, August 19, 2015.
Speaking to journalists on Tuesday after briefing the president on the activities of the ministry of communications, permanent secretary Tunji Olaopa said, the president was not against privatisation, he only wants to ascertain whether or not Nigeria was short-changed in the liquidation.
Olaopa added that Buhari was also concerned about the quality of service being offered by telecommunication firms.
He was optimistic that the president would intervene in the situation to ensure that Nigerians get value for money.
In other news, Buhari has approved the dissolution of the executive management team of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), This Dayreports.
Ahmed Lawan Kuru will replace Mustapha Chike-Obi, the pioneer managing director of AMCON whose tenure was due to expire in November this year.
This Day front page, August 19, 2015.
Mofoluke Benedicta Dosumu, Hewitt Adegboyega Benson and Abbas Mohammed Jega, who were appointed alongside Chike-Obi in 2010 as executive directors (EDs) of the corporation will be replaced by Kola Ayeye, Eberechukwu Uneze and Aminu Ismail.
The dissolution order was contained in a statement by the special adviser to the president on media and publicity, Femi Adesina.
The appointment of Kuru and the three new AMCON executive directors became effective yesterday.
The Guardian reports that indigenes of Bakassi have called for clarification over recent pronouncement by President Buhari that Nigeria would not revisit the 2005 Green Tree Agreement (GTA) that ceded Bakassi Penninsula to Cameroun.
The call for definition of status within the context of Nigeria’s political framework was in response to what Bakassi leaders referred to as hardship and lack of infrastructure 10 years after the agreement, and eight years after the Cross River state government relocated many of them to the Ikang area.
Nigeria, under the leadership of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, had, in a symbolic ceremony that was supposed to be held on Bakassi land (but later took place at the Government House Calabar on August 14, 2008) ceded its long-held ‘territory’ to Cameroun, its eastern neighbour.
The Guardian front page, August 19, 2015.
Cross Rivers state had, through the House of Assembly, created additional wards from Ikang in Akpabuyo council and added to the remnants of the lost Bakassi to make up New Bakassi under the Law No 7 of 2007.
Admitting, however, that the Akpabuyo local council “is in conflict with remnants of old Bakassi,” Florence Ita Giwa, who prides herself as political leader of the people, told The Guardian that the creation has a legal status.
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