Wednesday, 25 February 2015
'First 9 years of education will be free in Kaduna'...
Photos of US & Spanish soldiers training African soldiers
Chris Brown denied entrance to Canada,
"Unfortunately I will not be able to perform in front of sold out crowds in Montreal & Toronto. The good people of the Canadian government wouldn't allow me entry. I'll be back this summer and will hopefully see all my Canadian fans!"Chris was scheduled to perform in Montreal yesterday night and Toronto this night. And fans had already bought tickets. Not nice! Die hard Chris Brown fans are now asking the US govt to ban Justin Bieber - who is Canadian - from entry into the US. According to TMZ, Canadian law dictates a person could be "criminally inadmissible" if they have been convicted of a crime involving assault.
See Boko Haram members captured in Chad
Kylie Jenner dress that shows her underwear
Shagari's birthday...and yes, Obasanjo was there
Nnaji shares new lovely pic of herself...
Genevieve
peace prize worth $170k for Nigerian woman campaign against Boko Haram
.
For her tireless vocal protest against Boko Haram killings and kidnappings, and pressuring central and local governing officials to fight back against the extremists. the Niwano Peace Foundation said it has awarded Ibanga its 20 million yen annual prize.
$170k would be about N34million now. Congrats to her..."Esther has worked extensively to foster and facilitate reconciliation between conflicting religious and tribal groups, setting up an organization that has all tribal women leaders on its membership" the Buddhist group-backed foundation said.
Will & Jada Smith kiss passionately on the red carpet
Christina shows off too much side-boobs at Focus premiere
Kim K & North West dress in matching ski outfits
Jonathan missed the point on missing N30trn - Charles Soludo
"So you’ll see that there is a lot of politicking about some of the serious issues. Not too long ago I read in one of the papers, I think Vanguard, that former chief economic adviser to President Obasanjo who also went to become a CBN governor… Soludo is a professor and first class material. Yes, making a first class in economics, he is a brilliant person. His secondary school records are fantastic. So by all standards he is a brilliant person. So the Vanguard wrote that he accused Ngozi; that N30 trillion was stolen under the watch of Ngozi in four years. Ngozi became a finance minister, let’s say from 2011 till date. From that time till now, our annual budget is between N4.3 trillion and N4.9 trillion. So even if you put all together, it is about 18 plus trillion naira, & not 30 trillion.
The budget for these four years is less than N20 trillion, but Soludo said that under Ngozi’s watch they stole N30 trillion. This is in the papers, social media, stored in the clouds and will continue to be there. And when you type it in it will come out that during President Jonathan’s time they stole N30 trillion. We asked Ngozi how her colleagues in the World Bank saw the accusation and she said they were laughing and couldn’t believe it. There are certain things that you just cannot believe and if that is coming from somebody considered to be cerebral like Professor Soludo, then of course you know what the ordinary person would say. It is all political"President Jonathan said.
Professor Soludo reacted to this interview by releasing an article this evening. See it below...
My attention has been drawn this morning to an article entitled: “Jonathan Replies Soludo over “missing N30 trillion” claim”— extracting from Mr. President’s interview as published by Thisday newspaper.
ThisDay quoted Mr. President as saying that “Soludo said that under Ngozi’s watch they stole N30 trillion” but that since the sum of the federal budget over the last four years was less than N30 trillion, such an amount could not have been “stolen”.
According to the President, “it is all political”. I had earlier stated that I would not make further comments on the issues until probably after the elections but since Mr. President has decided to join the fray, I am constrained to make a further brief clarification.
For me, President Jonathan is a gentleman and a friend but I have a fundamental disagreement on his management of the economy. On the issues at stake, I believe that the pressures of office and the hectic electioneering campaigns have not allowed him time to read my articles or that his staff have not explained the contents to him hence he totally missed the point in his comments. For the avoidance of doubt, let me clarify as follows:
1. In my article entitled “Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the Missing Trillions”, I presented some rough calculations covering: oil theft, money that ought to accrue to stock of foreign reserves, unbudgeted oil subsidy payments, customs duty waivers, leakages through the self-financing government parastatals, unremitted sums by NNPC, etc.
I concluded that section of my article by noting that: “I have a long list but let me wait for now. I do not want to talk about other ‘black pots’ that impinge on national security. My estimate, Madam, is that probably more than N30 trillion has either been stolen or lost or unaccounted for or simply mismanaged under your watchful eyes in the past four years”.
2. It is evident that the monies I referred to are “off-budget”. These are monies that did not make it to the budget. I find it funny that the Government deliberately avoided the issues raised above but instead has sought to divert attention by focusing on the “federal budget”.
Let me state for the record that I believe that the amount of resources that are either stolen from the economy or out-rightly mismanaged by government far exceeds the federal budget per annum.
Ours is about a N100 trillion economy, and I will be shocked if the government pretends that it does not know that currently about 10% of the GDP falls into a ‘black hole’ on annual basis.
We have not added figures based on counterfactual analysis such as the cost to the aggregate economy of bad or misguided economic policy. For example, in today’s Thisday newspaper, a headline news reports that “Aliko Dangote, Africa’s Richest Man, Loses $7.8 Billion as Naira, Stocks Plunge” while reporting that “In dollar terms, the devaluation has knocked more than $40 billion off the value of Nigeria’s economy”. Of course, most people predicted that oil prices would soon fall but we were caught unprepared, and today, the parallel market exchange rate is N225 to the dollar.
Thus, the kind of analysis in today’s Thisday is just one little example of the kind of collateral damages–‘costs’ or ‘losses’– that mismanagement foists on the system. To repeat, my article did not focus on the federal budget: the mismanagement of the consumption budget and its unprecedented debt accumulation (with low value-for-money expenditures) are entirely different matters.
3. What I found particularly disconcerting as a Nigerian from the comments I read is the fixation to validation from the World Bank. According to Mr. President, “we asked the Minister how her colleagues at the World Bank saw the accusation”. I shook my head in disbelief. It is instructive that no one asked what Nigerians thought or ‘how Nigerians saw it’ but rather what was important to government was the impression of the World Bank. If this is the mind-set of our leaders, then ordinary citizens have real cause to worry.
Well, I have read several editorial comments of Nigerian media and they do not agree with the ‘impression’ of the World Bank official. I read a similar comment by a high government official stating that World Bank officials and CNN had told them that government was doing well and therefore who else could question them.
But neither the World Bank nor CNN conducts comprehensive independent surveys on the economy— they comment based on the data they are given— and their subjective “opinions” cannot substitute for hard facts.
The World Bank is not a statistical agency. I can provide a long list of countries that World Bank reports praised as ‘star performers’ and they slumped into deep crisis almost immediately after. Check out the World Bank and IMF reports on the US and other countries’ economies shortly before the unprecedented global financial and economic crisis in fifty years (the Great Recession of 2008/09).
Actually for many countries once they start getting such ‘praises’, then perceptive officials begin to worry. Nigeria is probably the only country where its government officials quote the World Bank while ignoring data from its own statistical agency!
A serious concern is that while government relies on external validation (opinion) as ‘proof’ of its performance, it is selective in the process—accepting the positive ones and disparaging the negative ones. Our recent exchanges illustrate the point. In my first article (26th January): “Buhari Vs Jonathan: Beyond the Elections”, I argued that “the economy seems to be on auto pilot, with confusion as to who is in charge, and government largely as a constraint.
There are no big ideas, and it is difficult to see where economic policy is headed to. My thesis is that the Nigerian economy, if properly managed, should have been growing at an annual rate of about 12% given the oil boom, and poverty and unemployment should have fallen dramatically over the last five years”. No one has credibly challenged the above, except what the Financial Times of London described as a “furious response by the Minister”. But, the influential Economist Magazine of London and New York Times agreed with us. According to the Economist editorial (7th February, 2015):
“… as Africa’s biggest economy stages its most important election since the restoration of civilian rule in 1999, and perhaps since the civil war four decades ago, Nigerians must pick between the incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, who has proved an utter failure, and the opposition leader, Muhammadu Buhari….
The single bright spot of his rule has been Nigeria’s economy, one of the world’s fastest-growing. Yet that is largely despite the government rather than because of it, and falling oil prices will temper the boom. The prosperity has not been broadly shared: under Mr Jonathan poverty has increased. Nigerians typically die eight years younger than their poorer neighbours in nearby Ghana”. I gave the Government an “F” grade on economic management, and the Economist described its performance as “utter failure”.
The Economist also basically agreed with me that the re-basing of the economy and its observed ‘growth’ have nothing to do with government policy. Again, government has not credibly challenged the above or is the Economist’s view also ‘all political ’? Government simply waved it off. My point is that if Government has to rely on the “impressions” of external bodies, then it should be consistent and comprehensive.
4. In conclusion, let me re-state that I firmly stand by my earlier statements. These are weighty statements which I weighed carefully before issuing. I appreciate that this is an election time and so attempts would be made to trivialize, or either play politics with, or divert attention from, them. In a serious society, we should have had a good debate on these matters as they could provide some of the building blocks in trying to pick the pieces after the elections.
Part of our citizen duty in a democracy is to raise such issues and demand for answers. In the meantime, I grant that our leaders are busy with campaigns but these issues won’t go away until we have a transparent resolution. Be assured that after the elections, we will be back with even more questions!
an expired party card torn Obasanjo - PDP
According to Professor OLadipo, Chief Obasanjo is over 80 years old and there are certain actions people of his age take that they themselves can't explain. Prof Oladiposaid this while speaking to a group of students who came to show their solidarity for President Jonathan at the party's National secretariat in Abuja yesterday.
See the signboard Edo people put up for their Governor
Tuesday, 24 February 2015
President Jonathan & wife attend Bayelsa women funeral
Bomb blast at Kano motorpark leaves many dead
Beautiful Seyi Law's wife and Basketmouth's wife hang out
These comedians know how to pick beautiful women...
pictures Check out this throwback photo of Charly Boy's wife, Lady Di
Whitney, Bobby, drugs & death..and why their daughter never stood a chance, by former bodyguard
It has been the painful and very public unravelling of an American Dream. Millions of fans around the world watched appalled as Whitney, the ultimate diva of her generation, descended into the chaotic ravages of drug abuse and then, eventually, death at 48.
And now, just three years later, her fate has been replicated in an equally shocking style. Today the singer’s 21-year-old daughter, Bobbi Kristina, herself a drug addict, lies in a coma, hovering close to death.
Gordon says Bobby Brown hardly saw his daughter, now only wants Whitney's money
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