The plan by Comrade Adams Oshiomhole to illegally remove the Edo South APC Chairman, Barr. Gentleman Amegor has been exposed.
oshiomhole
The Governor has given a huge sum of money to the State Chairman, Barr, Anselm Ojezua to entice other members of the State Executive Council to pass a Vote of No Confidence on him (Barr. Amegor) which will give room for his final removal as Edo South Chairman of APC.
This is the second plan employed by the Strategist of the Governor to remove him, haven failed in their formal evil plot. The only sin of Mr. Gentleman Amegor is that he is supporting the Deputy Governor in the next APC primary as against the Governor’s choice Godwin Obaseki.
Out of the five State Executive the Governor approached to do this illicit Job by the State Chairman ANSELM Ojezua, some of them rejected the offer and has come out to expose this clandestine plot to the other members who then vowed to resist the plot at the meeting of the State Exco tomorrow 31/03/16 in Benin City, because they perceive it may get to their turn tomorrow.
This is another desperate move by the the Governor to silent anybody that seems to be a threat on his plan to impose Godwin Obaseki on the party. It is unfortunate, selfish, evil, undemocratic, condemnable and must be rejected members of the party.
It’s regrettable that the APC Edo State chapter led by ANSELM OJEZUA has continued to fan the embers of discord within the party rather than develop cohesive measures to unite the party ahead of September 10, gubernatorial election in the State.
We also have it on good authority that a prominent PDP gubernatorial aspirant has been going round and pleading with his left over friends in the APC to make sure Godwin Obaseki emerges as APC candidate in order to make winning the election easier for him/PDP as he is not ready to face Rt. Hon. Dr. Pius Odubu in the Election.
If the Truth be told APC is on trial in Edo State. APC should put his house in order now!
Governor Adams Oshiomhole’s ghostbuster-general and Alhaji Aliko Dangote’s train-bearer-in-chief, Mr. Godwin Obaseki has been demonstrating how unconfident, unqualified and unintelligent a governorship aspirant; expecially one hashed on a demobilized political space can be! It’s so disorienting at best and at worst, repulsive to read of governorship aspirant in this time and space who lacks basic knowledge of national configuration as it relates to constitutionally settled matter in the Exclusive, Concurrent and Residual lists.
Godwin Obaseki
Except for lack of conscious attention, I have, for the umpteen times, read or heard Mr. Godwin Obaseki, one of the September 10th Governorship contenders goofed about state-craft should he succeed the twitterpated governor of Edo State. Mr. Obaseki’s attempts at the soapbox in recent times come with mis feelings, in all instances.
Earlier, Obaseki’s lame exposition on the Benin historical facts was a miscarriage as much as political naivety. He granted two separate interviews in two national newspapers where he chided the Benin dynasty for not taking his grandfather’s counsel. In the other interview, he revealed his near emptiness; absent-mindedness, vague platitudes and sheer insolence.
Up till this moment, Mr. Obaseki has not refuted his earlier assertion “that when the British entered Benin Kingdom and attempted to do ‘business’ with Benin, his grandfather advised the then Oba of Benin, Oba Ovonramwen N’ogbaisi, to sign a treaty with the foreigners. He is yet to perforate all available evidence which suggests that the British did not intend to do business with any of their eventual colonies, rather they were on a colonial mission as they did also with Jaja, Nana, Attahiru and Kosoko, among others.
In another interview, Mr. Obaseki was quoted to have said, “my area of specialisation is (Capitalism). I was born into Capitalist system and it is also the system of governance of Edo State people right from time immemorial and I don’t know when socialism entered the system”. Edo electorate are waiting patiently for him to come clean on ‘how, when and where was the Capitalist system he was born into’.
Not done yet, Mr. Obaseki disclosed thus: “But, in the meantime, we also had the benefit of the experience of Comrade Oshiomhole on how to execute transactions, policies and projects even when the super structure of governance is broken down. So, we had to build roads, whether we had qualified engineers to help us to design roads in the Ministry of Works or not. We had to get our bills of quantity right for our schools and our government buildings; we had to procure the services of consultants to help us understand the lay of the land of our environment to do the mapping to determine what we needed to do before we build roads”.
This is the first time I am hearing that pieces of grand engineering edifices have taken place or health care delivery services have been achieved without doctors and nurses! In other words, Edo people should not be certain that schools, hospitals and roads built presently would last for a while. Or shall we also say that Mr. Obaseki who is the head of Governor Adams Oshiomhole’s Economic Team is not aware that engineers, doctors, and nurses have been employed by Governor Adams Oshiomhole’s administration?
This is the point at which Edo State and Nigerians have arrived at ground zero. Governance finally died literally in the land. This is probably the first time in living memory that a would be successor to the governor’s throne is totally removed from the government in which he serves in an attempt to shield despair and despondency etched on the faces of the citizens.
Obaseki’s major gaffe came from his latest voyage in the media titled: “Obaseki unfolds agenda” by one of the national dailies. “One thing that this government has started that the people will not see until two years time is electricity. Government has encouraged people to come and generate electricity for Edo. As we speak, our investors have started building big electricity plants across the state that will generate about 450 megawatts each. The total electricity we consume in Edo is about 100 but these people are building a plant that will generate 450 each. So by the end of 2017, we will have enough electricity for Edo”, the aspirant stated.
The above statement by Obaseki is replete with vagueness. It falls short of educating Edo people how many of such power generating firms would be churning out 450 wattages. If his arithmetics is correct through equitable distribution it means Nigeria currently generates 3,700 megawatts. Can you spot the difference between South Africa which produces around 240,300 gigawatt-hours (865,000 TJ) electricity annually with a population of barely 53 million according to 2011 demography. Most of this electricity in South Africa is consumed domestically, but around 12,000 gigawatt-hours are annually exported to Swaziland, Botswana, Mozambique, Lesotho, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe and other Southern African Development Community countries participating in the Southern African Power Pool.
If we want constant power supply that can sustain heavy industries, the minimum standard across the country should be in the neighbourhood of 1,000 mw for every one million people. Edo State at the last count is presently estimated to be inhabited by nearly five million people. Therefore, Edo State needs as much as 5,000mega watts of electricity. On the average, it will a cost nothing less than $5 billion.
How many megawatts is Obaseki envisaging and how long will it take Edo State to get there in the very unlikely event that he becomes governor? Where is he getting the investors that will invest such amount of money in Edo State when the people are extremely wretched with very high rate of political unrest and uncertainty in the land? Where is Mr Obaseki’s blueprint for the transformation of the education and health sectors for the State? Will it be out of place to alleged that a certain godfather is out to foist fraud on the people?
You can clearly understand the problem with Nigeria state and the governing process. For Mr. Obaseki to say he would bring constant electricity to the state, shows that he clearly doesn’t understand the rules and operation of electricity in Nigeria. One of the major problems facing Nigeria with power( electricity) is the central control which is listed in the Exclusive list. Mr. Obaseki knew that if Edo State should build a power plant producing 450 megawatts each by non-existent companies as he claimed, it is not owe by the state and her people.
Now, this. Why did Obaseki feign ignorant that his unaware that electricity generation is not for the states? Why did he not nationalise the need to decentralize power generation, distribution and supply if deception is not at the heart of it? If not for political ends why should Mr. Obaseki claim that the Azura Power Plant located in Edo State belongs to the state government, something everyone knew belongs to the federal government? Shouldn’t Mr. Obaseki have remonstrate on the pertinent of states generating electricity, credit itself first with the supply, and what is left should then be sold to the national grid? Could it be that he knew that the people are gullible and sought to take advantage of it? Can it be said that it is an intentional move to deceitfully mislead the people he intend to govern?
One of the falter flaws of Mr. Obaseki’s minders’ defence is akin to a filmic, a man falling off a skyscrapers; suddenly a fire engine rushed to the scene and position itself beneath the falling man’s head, then the roof slid back! They have refused to accept the fact that the old order which we fought and thought had destroyed itself with the coming of Adams Oshiomhole has resurfaced. All the certainties of political emancipation, its heroic possibilities and buoyant optimism for a new order has evaporated. Now, Edo electorate are being told, like the biblical children of Lot not to look back, lest they be turned into a sack of salt!
Erasmus Ikhide, social commentator writes from Lagos Nigeria.
A Lagos-based lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana (SAN), says politically-exposed persons facing corruption charges do not deserve bail.
“Since victims of grand corruption including armed robbery and kidnap suspects are not usually admitted to bail, those who are charged with looting the treasury should no longer be granted bail,” Falana said.
While expressing worry that many of the ongoing high profile corruption cases may not be concluded before 2019 when President Muhammadu Buhari would have finished his term, Falana also made a case for the creation of special courts.
The activist lawyer expressed these views in a paper he delivered on Thursday at the roundtable on anti-corruption war convened by the Department of Jurisprudence and International Law, University of Lagos, where he was the keynote speaker.
The roundtable, which was chaired by the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption, Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), had a former Minister of Education, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, Dr. Femi Aribisala and Dr. Ayo Obe as discussants.
In his paper titled, “Rule of Law and Treatment of Politically-exposed corruption cases,” delivered on his behalf by Mr. Wahab Shittu, Falana said if the Buhari government did not undertake an urgent reform of the criminal justice system, including creating special courts, its anti-corruption war efforts would amount to nothing.
He also took a swipe at the Nigerian Bar Association and the Body of Senior Advocates of Nigeria, who had called on Buhari to respect the rule of law, saying they were not sincere.
He said, “The Body of Senior Advocates of Nigeria has urged the government to fight corruption under the rule of law. On its own part the NBA has censored the Federal Government for violating the human rights of certain suspects. But neither the BOSAN nor the NBA has deemed it fit to caution the members of the legal profession who are determined to frustrate the prosecution of corruption cases.
“As far as both bodies are concerned, human rights are the exclusive reserve of the bourgeois. Hence, the tenets of the rule of law are only invoked when the trial of VIPs is involved, while human rights are violated in Nigeria when the looters of the treasury are arrested and detained for a few days without trial.”
Falana wondered why BOSAN and NBA did not talk of human rights when “70 soldiers were recently tried in camera, convicted and sentenced to death for demanding weapons to fight the well-armed terrorists,” and why the two bodies were not bothered about the plight of “40,000 out of the 52,000 prison inmates who are awaiting trial under dehumanising conditions.”
In his opening remarks, Sagay lamented that highly-placed Nigerians who were once celebrated are now the same set of people being exposed as “looters, bandits and locusts.”
“I fear that Nigerians may become so sated with this daily diet of financial brigandry that they may no longer feel shocked, disturbed, angered and determined to see justice served on the guilty and their stolen property recovered,” Sagay said.
He linked the daily woes of the country in form of poverty, poor roads, poor power supply, poor health care and so on to corruption.
Ezekwesili, Aribisala and Obe advised the Federal Government to put in place measures that could deter corruption.
Also speaking on Thursday at the special congress and public lecture organised by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye, chapter, Falana said judges who granted frivolous perpetual injunctions in cases of corruption and lawyers who filed for such injunctions were scuttling the anti-corruption war in the country.
Falana, who was the guest lecturer at the event, also attended by the President of ASUU, Isa Fagge, noted that the neo-colonialist nature of capitalism being practised in the country had produced a set of wealthy Nigerians who “are bigger than the nation’s laws.”
He said, “The criminal justice system has been hijacked by the corrupt and looters of the public treasury and their lawyers. It is only in Nigeria that an accused will ask his trial to be suspended.
“Many of the governors who faced corruption charges, their lawyers had asked for their trial to be suspended, and judges granted this. How would a lawyer also plead with a judge that a criminal should not be arrested?
“Someone who stole millions of naira getting perpetual injunction not to be arrested and prosecuted, lawyers must allow cases to go on.”
Falana, who spoke on the topic: ‘The limits of anti-corruption law’ said there was nothing close to equality before the law in the country, as the wealthy and influential Nigerians get lighter punishment while the commoners get stiffer penalties in the criminal system.
He said, “In Edo State, someone was sentenced to three years imprisonment for stealing bush meat, another one who stole handset in Osun State was also sentenced to seven years imprisonment.
“But corrupt public officials prefer to be remanded in Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s custody or being remanded in Kuje Prisons.
“Let me tell you, EFCC cells have beddings and mosquito nets, and I have been detained in Kuje Prisons twice, it is one of the best prisons in the country. Why didn’t they take them to Kirikiri or Ikoyi or Ijebu Ode Prisons?
“And whoever have been detained in police cells would know that they sleep on bare floor, and a bucket put at a corner to serve as container for their faeces.”
He noted that with the way the cases of corruption were being handled by the EFCC currently, and given the incessant injunctions being granted, the government might not get more than five convictions.
To tame the lawyers involved in this practice, he called for publication of the names of those being tried for corrupt practices and those of their lawyers.
He specifically asked ASUU to also join in the fight against graft.
Fagge, on his own part, said the universities had deviated from their original role of carrying out research and making it available to the society.
He also noted that corruption had continued to thrive because no one had been brought to book.
The Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, Timi Frank, says a festering crisis, brewing in the ruling party has the potential of destroying it.
Frank said this at a media briefing in Abuja on Thursday, where he claimed that there were internal disputes in the APC despite the attempts of its leaders to project an image of cohesion.
He explained that he had warned of a crisis in the Bayelsa State chapter of the APC before and after the governorship election in the state, adding that his warning was not taken seriously.
APC data Centre
He said, “I spoke about my state in Bayelsa, people ignored me. I’m speaking again; it would happen soon at the national level that these things we are hiding have started already.
“If anybody should tell you there’s no division even at the national level, they’re telling lies. I can tell you there are issues; there are very critical issues.
“The issue of the Senate President is still lingering; nobody is saying anything at the national level, but I tell you, any Nigerian that knows will tell you very clearly that with the body language of our party as of today, if we are not careful, we are going to lose our popularity.
“It will be a very big disgrace that we have hands that are not competent at the centre to harmonise the aggrieved persons and make us to move forward.
“So, there is crisis in the party. We have too many divisions right now within the party. So, I won’t be scared to speak; that is my personal opinion and I’ve spoken again and I will continue to speak out.”
But the National Secretary of the party, Mai Mala Buni, in a statement late on Thursday dismissed Frank’s assertions, stated that the allegations were “bogus” and should be disregarded.
Buni added, “The bogus and misleading allegations are unnecessary distractions to the party’s resolve to fully support the President Muhammadu Buhari administration to deliver on the motley promises made by our great party to the electorate.
“The APC national leadership remains united and solidly committed to the task of bringing cohesion to the party at all levels.
“Recently, the APC held its National Caucus and National Executive Committee meetings where positive and far-reaching decisions were collectively taken by the party’s leadership to drive the party forward.”
The statement further read, “The party will not deny anybody or interest the right to seek justice where he feels this has been denied him. However, we sincerely appeal that we all play by the rules in our engagements and be guided in our utterances.
“The public is advised not to misinterpret or confuse Mr. Timi Frank’s personal opinion to be the official position of the party or the true reflection of what is happening inside the party.
“For the umpteenth time, only the APC National Chairman and the National Secretary are authorised to officially speak for the party.”
President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday ruled out the possibility of signing the 2016 Appropriation Bill passed by the National Assembly last week early as expected by Nigerians and other stakeholders.
President Buhari
He said before he would append his signature to the document, he would do a ministry-by-ministry review of the budget to ensure that what had been returned to him was the same with what his administration submitted to the National Assembly.
According to a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, the President spoke on Thursday during a meeting with the United States Secretary of State, Mr. John Kerry, in Washington DC.
Buhari is currently in the US for the 4th Nuclear Security Summit.
He insisted that he would review the bill critically before assenting to it.
He said the thorough review was necessitated by alteration and padding of the budget proposals which were carried out by some unnamed persons.
The President said there was the need to review the appropriation bill to be certain that its contents tallied with the authentic budget proposal presented to the National Assembly.
“Some bureaucrats removed what we put in the proposal and replaced them with what they wanted. I have to look at the bill that has been passed by the National Assembly, ministry by ministry, to be sure that what has been brought back for me to sign is in line with our original submission,” Buhari said.
The President also used the opportunity of the meeting to promise that his administration would continue to vigorously prosecute its war against corruption.
He sought and received an assurance from Kerry that the US would facilitate the repatriation of all stolen Nigerian funds found within the American banking system.
“It will greatly help our country if you assist us to recover all our stolen funds which we can establish to be within your financial system,” the President told Kerry.
Responding, the Secretary of State said he had been told that the stolen Nigerian funds were in “billions of dollars”.
“It’s not easy to hide that amount of money and we are pretty good in tracing them,” Kerry assured Buhari.
He added that relevant US officials would meet with the Chairman of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Magu, to discuss further cooperation in that regard.
Kerry applauded the Buhari administration’s success in rolling back the Boko Haram insurgency, saying the US would continue to give Nigeria all possible support to ensure that the terror sect was finally eliminated as a threat to national and regional security.
The Secretary of State also hailed Buhari’s order that Nigeria’s Armed Forces must show greater regard for human rights in the theatre of operations against Boko Haram.
Acknowledging that the US had been of great help to his administration in the retraining and re-equipping of the Nigerian Armed Forces that had resulted in the significant success already achieved against Boko Haram, Buhari said the Federal Government was working very hard to restore normalcy to the north eastern states.
“Boko Haram no longer holds any local government area. We are reconstructing damaged facilities and preparing the police to take over and reassert civilian control over areas affected by the insurgency,” the President told Kerry.
Meanwhile, senators and members of the House of Representatives are unhappy with their respective chairmen of the Committees on Appropriation over the hasty recommendations that pushed the National Assembly into passing the 2016 budget without including the details, The PUNCH learnt on Thursday.
Findings showed that lawmakers in both chambers on the advice of the committees, had passed the estimates of the budget on Wednesday last week without the details in the hope that the committees would attach them before the Appropriation Bill was forwarded to the President for assent.
“As it turned out, this did not happen. Their action seriously places the National Assembly at a disadvantaged position whereby the Presidency found the opportunity to really hit lawmakers below the belt,” an influential National Assembly official told The PUNCH on Thursday.
“This was a budget that was full of errors from the side of the executive. The executive admitted that there were indeed errors and sent in corrections.
“Having taken so long to work on these errors, the committees were not expected to allow any loopholes regarding the issue of details, thereby turning the heat on the National Assembly.”
A former Governor of Gombe State, Danjuma Goje, chairs the Senate Committee on Appropriation, while a second-term lawmaker from Kano State, Mr. Abdulmumin Jibrin, heads that of the House of Reps.
Investigations indicated that Buhari’s refusal to sign the 2016 Appropriation Bill without the details of the budget had jolted Senators and members of the House, who had all along thought that they had been properly guided by the committees.
A senior legislator, who did not want to be quoted, said Buhari was right to have refused to sign the budget.
He told The PUNCH that lawmakers were quite angry but found it difficult to openly condemn Goje and Jibrin because it would send the “wrong signals” that the National Assembly members were fighting against themselves.
The legislator added, “The President is right. How did we get to the point of sending the budget to him without the details?
“It is like asking Buhari to sign his own death warrant. Yes, the budget estimates are important but the details are the main issue. The devil that we talk about in budgeting, is in the details, not the highlights.
“If you sign the highlights, you have agreed to accept responsibility for any flaws in the details as well.
“It is our cross, let us carry it. After suffering to clean up the errors of the executive, we allowed ourselves to be bashed by this mistake of not waiting to fine-tune the details before rushing the bill to Mr. President.”
The PUNCH made fruitless efforts to get the views of the Majority Leader of the House, Mr. Femi Gbajabiamila, and the Minority Leader, Mr. Leo Ogor, on the development.
As of the time of filing this report on Thursday, text messages sent to the lawmakers by one of our correspondents had not been responded to.
On Wednesday, Jibrin had defended the action of the National Assembly in sending the budget to Buhari without the details.
He claimed that in the past, Presidents had signed the estimates without the details, which would normally come after one or two weeks of passing the budget.
He singled out former President Olusegun Obasanjo for having done that, admitting though that it was the prerogative of Buhari to refuse to sign until he had seen the details.
The Senate and the House had passed a budget estimate of N6.06tn on March 23.
The harmonised figure of N6.06tn passed was about N17bn less than the initial N6.07tn proposed by Buhari.
However, the National Assembly retained most of the projections of the President, including the $38 proposed as the crude oil benchmark.
The United States has acknowledged Nigeria’s challenges and told President Muhammadu Buhari administration that building Nigeria would not be “an overnight operation.”
United State Secretary of State, John Kerry
The US Secretary of State, Mr. John Kerry, who stated this on Wednesday at the US-Nigeria Binational Commission’s meeting in Washington, said America wanted Nigeria to succeed.
He stated, “You know there are challenges. That’s what your election was about. And so we are all aware that the world right now is facing many different challenges in terms of governance in various parts of the world and for various reasons: absence of capital, absence of structure, having to build capacity.
“These things take time. Nobody is pretending that it’s an overnight operation. It wasn’t for us. And some people sometimes are very revisionist in America about our own history, but we’ve gone through some very difficult periods and very difficult issues.”
Kerry recalled that America took slavery out of its constitution after it had been written in, adding that it was no small task.
He stated, “We’ve been through a history. And what we’re trying to do is, really, share with people the shortcut, if you will – how you can manage to avoid some of the mistakes that we’ve made in the course of our own development in ways that can embrace the hopes and the aspirations of millions upon millions of people. That’s what this is about.”
He added that Nigeria was finding very vibrant expression in every branch of the arts. He said that like the United States, Nigeria “is a diverse country with a very large and assertive civil society.”
Kerry said, “The United States, let me be clear, is very encouraged by President Buhari’s commitment to an economy that is more diversified, less dependent on a single commodity for export earnings, and that means we need to develop sustainability.
“Sustainable growth depends on a climate that is welcoming to investment and respectful of the environment and of workers’ rights. And we have learned in these last 25, 30 years that it is never a competition between the environment and development.
“That is a false choice – completely false, and particularly in the context of today’s challenge of climate change. You can develop in ways that protect the environment and also are competitive and provide jobs for people.”
According to him, Nigeria’s future is in Nigerians’ hands. He said the United States would help Nigeria.
“Our development assistance this year will top $600m, and we are working closely with your leaders – the leaders of your health ministry – to halt the misery that is spread by HIV/AIDS, by malaria, and by TB,” he added.
He explained that the US Power Africa Initiative was aimed at strengthening the energy sector where shortage in electricity had frustrated the population and impeded growth.
He explained that America’s long-term food security programme, Feed the Future, would help to create more efficient agriculture and to raise rural incomes in doing that.
Kerry said that under Buhari’s administration, Nigeria had been taking the fight to Boko Haram and had reduced Boko Haram’s capacity to launch full-scale attacks.
He, however, stated that the group remained a threat to the entire region, adding that the US and Nigerian governments had been collaborating on new ways to institute security measures.
“The threat that is posed by Boko Haram is serious, but it must not – and I really believe this – it will not be allowed to shape Nigeria’s future. Nigeria is a country with could almost boundless capacity for economic growth,” he stated.
He also said no country could make progress with a culture of impunity.
The US also supported Nigeria’s fight against corruption. The secretary of state also backed Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s efforts to prosecute corruption cases.
Kerry said that no country, including Nigeria, could make progress with a culture of impunity.
He stated, “We back the role of civil society and of the media in exposing corruption and in advocating for greater transparency.
“And we emphasise the message that in the United States, we don’t have a holier-than-thou attitude about this. Believe me, we don’t. We’ve had our own challenges with organised crime through some of our history, but we have fought back against it.
“And we have fought back against it with prosecutors, who are above reproach, above the possibility of any kind of interference, and that has made all the difference in the world. You cannot have impunity in your culture – in anybody’s culture – and expect to be able to make progress.”
He added that all countries should emphasise that the fact that the soliciting of a bribe at any level of government could not be considered business as usual.
In his address, Nigeria’s Foreign Minister, Geoffrey Onyeama, said it had not been easy for Nigeria.
“President Buhari has really persisted. He is somebody, as you all know, whose unimpeachable integrity is respected in Nigeria and around the world. And it was not an easy task for him in opposition to come into power, but as you found also with your incumbent President, anything and everything is possible,” he said.
Meanwhile, the BNC in a communiqué at the end of the meeting said it discussed among other things, measures to counter violent extremism and encourage defections from Boko Haram; the importance of protecting civilians and safeguarding human rights; the need for integrated planning for the restoration of full civilian authority, resettlement and reconstruction; the need to understand and eliminate sources of terrorist financing; and ways to expand intelligence sharing.
The BNC’s discussion on security cooperation was co-chaired by Mansur Dan-Ali, Nigeria’s Minister of Defence and US Deputy Secretary of State, Antony Blinken.
South Africa’s top court held on Thursday that President Jacob Zuma defied the constitution when he used $15m state funds to renovate his private home and ordered a refund.
The 11 justices of the Constitutional Court unanimously ruled that the President should reimburse some of the sum spent on the renovations, the amount of which will be determined by the national treasury.
According to CNN, the treasury has 60 days to file a report detailing the amount, and Zuma has 45 days after that to pay the money.
The court said Zuma “failed to uphold, defend and respect the constitution, as the supreme law of the land” with regard to the upgrading of his homestead in Nkandla, about 300 miles south-east of Johannesburg.
“The constitution, rule of law and accountability are the sharp and mighty sword ready to chop off the ugly head of impunity,” the court added.
The decision seems to settle the controversy that dates back nearly seven years, when Zuma embarked on the renovations soon after he resumed office for his first term.
The renovations to his home included a swimming pool, cattle enclosure, chicken run, visitors centre and amphitheatre. Opposition parties filed two cases, alleging misuse of public funds over the hefty price tag.
After the ruling, a statement from the South African government said Zuma “has noted and respects” the judgment.
“The President will reflect on the judgment and its implications on the state and government, and will in consultation with other impacted institutions of state, determine the appropriate action,” the statement added.
The court also found the country’s National Assembly in violation for its actions regarding the investigation of the President.
“The court thus held that the National Assembly’s resolution, based on the minister’s findings exonerating the President from liability, was inconsistent with the Constitution and unlawful,” the ruling summary said.
