18042019 - PRESIDENTIAL TUSSLE:I always beat you in every election, Buhari tells Atiku

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18 — Vanguard, THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2019 APRIL 14, 2019 marked the fifth anniversary of one of the saddest days in the history of Nigeria – the abduction of 276 girls of the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok in Borno State by Boko Haram Islamic terrorists. The girls were taking their school certificate exams when the terrorists came at night, wearing military uniforms and deceiving them that they were being taken to safety only to ferry them to unknown destinations. The Federal Government has managed to secure the release of 107 of the schoolgirls through swap deals with the terrorists, but at least 112 of them remain in custody of their abductors. Also, on February 19, 2018, another 110 girls of the Government Girls Science and Technical College, Dapchi in Yobe State, were abducted by the Abu Musab Al Barnawi faction of Boko Haram. They were held for nearly one month before they were brought back Chibok girls: Five years, still counting in broad daylight by the terrorists without Miss Leah Sharibu, the only Christian among them whom the terrorists continue to detain till date because she refused to convert to Islam. The abductions of these schoolgirls became the metaphors that triggered a worldwide campaign, #Bring Back Our Girls, BBOG. In Nigeria, the campaign was fronted by Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, Hajiya Hadiza Bala Usman, Hajiya Aisha Yusuf and others. They held vigils mainly at the Unity Fountain, Abuja and often marched to the Presidential Villa demanding action. Many newspapers mounted daycounting campaigns on their front pages and wrote countless editorials in support of the pressure on the government and the terrorists to release the girls. However, over the years, despite the Muhammadu Buhari regime succeeding the Goodluck Jonathan government in 2015, it appears that the BBOG campaign has virtually lost steam. Newspapers have abandoned their day-counts. The Federal Government rarely says anything about it except the shop-worn Twitter responses of President Buhari that he “would never rest” until the girls are freed. Much of the dampened spirit came from several sources last year. These included the Twitter posting by Ahmad Salkida, a journalist known to have credible links to the terrorists, that only 15 of the Chibok girls were still alive, and even those were “married off” to the terrorists. The full burden for the rescue of all abducted schoolgirls or at least, credible information about their current fates, lies fully with the Federal Government. We are no longer satisfied with the oft-recycled reassurances from the President in response to mounting pressures. It is high time the nation was told the naked truth about the situation of the girls to enable us begin to hold certain individuals or groups to account for their acts of commission or omission in the failure of the Federal Government to protect the Chibok and Dapchi schoolgirls. OPINION The problem with Nigerian religionism By Tochukwu Ezukanma AS he wasted away in a Nazi concentration camp, reality dawned on this German aristocrat. In a letter to his wife, he wrote: “Every man is a special thought of the Creator’s mind”. He was right or creation would have been mass production. God did not standardise a template for man, and then, mass-produced him, with everyone looking the same. It is because He thought about each and every one of us in a special way that he made each of us special: individually distinct. The Psalmists in Psalm 82: 6 wrote: “Ye all are gods”, and Jesus Christ agreed with the Jews in John 10:34 that we “are gods”. Yes, every man is a special thought of God’s mind - a miniature God - created with individualised identity, temperament, talents and destiny. In this our excessively religious country, we passionately worship God. We frequent the church, pay our offerings, tithes and first fruits, sow seeds, and sing praises and pray to God. Lamentably, despite our enthusiasm for God, we disregard and disdain the visible and palpable gods that pervade our lives - man. Imagine a flight passenger that started a fight with the pilot, and as, he was teaching the pilot a punching lesson, the pilot, bruised and flustered, was losing control of the plane. And, as the plane floundered and went off course, the passenger, as he continued to pummel the pilot, also continued to pray to God to grant him journey mercy and lead him safely to his destination. It is not impossible that God may answer his prayer. But the best way for him to have ensured God’s journey mercy, and thus, a safe flight would have been to respect and obey the pilot and his crew, the miniature gods appointed by the Supreme God to direct his journey. The problem of the flight passenger is that he refused to realise that man is god, and that the pilot and his crew are small gods appointed by the Supreme God to take him to his destination. Like the pilot and the crew manning that flight, every man we encounter is a miniature God playing a given role in accordance to the will of the Almighty God. These roles may be grand, even monumental or minute, even insignificant; magnificent or detestable, but all in line with His divine design. In the same way, the flight passenger would have made it easier for God to answer his prayers by recognising and respecting the mini-gods designated to guide his flight; our worship of God becomes meaningful and more rewarding when we acknowledge, respect and love the small Gods we encounter routinely in our everyday lives. There has been an inordinate growth of the Christian religion in Nigeria. Village communities and city neighbourhoods are studded with churches. Believers are in churches on Wednesdays, Thursday, Fridays, and of course, Sundays. There are morning devotions, mid-night vigils, Sunday services, Fellowship meetings, and one revival and crusade after another. These religious gatherings are filled with praise and worship, prayers, exhortations and the usual sermons. Paradoxically, Nigerians are very fraudulent, wicked and violent; they have very little regards for human life. Even the bastions of the Christian faith, the churches, are suffused with selfishness, dishonesty, intolerance and other none Christ-like attributes that the Bible repeatedly stated should not exist among Christians. How can a country inundated with the Christian doctrine founded on love, humility, compassion, lawfulness, etc, remain full of hate, arrogance, cruelty, lawlessness, etc? It is because Nigerians, especially, the rulers and those in power and authority, do not know that man is God; and that it is in serving man that we serve God, and in loving man that we love God. They refuse to realise The true love and worship of the Supreme God is in respecting, caring and loving man, the miniature Gods that pervade our lives that in brutalising man, you brutalise God, and in lying to, and stealing from, the people, you lie to, and steal from God. The Bible tells us that there are millions of angels in heaven assigned solely to the worship of God. So, although we should sing praises unto Him, but, by the standards of these angels’ heavenly symphony, our worship songs must be discordant and croaky: just noise. The giving of offerings, paying of tithe and first fruit, and the sowing of seed that presently dominate the preaching of most Nigerian pastors, are all fine but not the essence of Christianity. In Matthew 5 verse 23 to 24, the Bible says: If you bring your gift (offering, tithe, etc) to the altar and then remember that your brother has something against you, go first reconcile with him before you offer your gift (offering, tithe, etc). In other words, making peace with man and living in peace and love with him is spiritually more important than our offerings to God. God does not need the money the pastors squelch out of us and “give” to God. It lines the pastors’ pockets. Does God not own the world and all that is in it? There is really nothing that man can do for God. It is in doing to man that we do to God. We can only love God by loving our fellow human beings and serve God by serving man. It is in respecting man that we respect God; and in caring for man, we care for God. To honour God and dishonour man, revere God and despise man, love God and hate man is hypocritical, sinful absurdity. The true love and worship of the Supreme God is in respecting, caring and loving man, the miniature Gods that pervade our lives. Jesus Christ made this point in Matthew 25 verse 34 to 40: “Then shall the King say unto them… Come you bless of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you…For I was hungry, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and you gave drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me: Naked, and ye clothe me. And the righteous will ask: ‘Lord, when saw we thee hungry and fed thee, thirsty, and gave thee drink, stranger, and took thee in, or naked and clothe thee?’ And the King shall answer…them: ‘Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me’”. Yes, in doing unto man, you do unto God. Man is an expression and an embodiment of God. There is God in man and man in God. For we all are gods. *Ezukanma, a public affairs commentator, wrote from Lagos.
ELECTRICITY: National grid suffers 6 system collapses in 4months ...as 7 GENCOs generate 0mw ....N161bn lost to inefficient gas supply By Prince Okafor The national grid has suffered six system collapses in the first four months of the year, implying more setbacks for the nation’s power sector, in spite of ample investment by the Federal Government through the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, to stabilise the grid. This development undermined distribution of electricity to Nigerian households, resulting to intermittent darkness. System collapse is witnessed when a system disturbance occurs with the grid not being able to withstand the disturbance, which usually leads to a blackout or abnormally low voltage in a significant part of the power system. A report obtained by Vanguard from the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, PWH, shows that total collapse occurred five times in January, while one partial collapse was witnessed in April. The report also showed that seven Generating Companies, GENCOs in the country are yet to generate any megawatt to the national grid. The seven GENCOs include Alaoji NIPP, Afam IV-V, Ibom, ASCO, A.E.S, Trans Amadi, Egbin ST6. A source who spoke on condition of anonymity told Vanguard that the major reason why the GENCOs were not able to generate electricity to the grid was as a result of nonavailability of gas due to accumulated debts. Furthermore, a report obtained from the office of the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, shows that, an estimated amount of N161 billion was lost to an insufficient gas supply, distribution, transmission and water reserves from January to April 15, 2019. Commenting, Chief Executive Officer, All-On, a renewable energy CURRENCY BUYING SELLING US DOLLAR POUNDS EURO FRANC YEN CFA WAUA RENMINBI RIYAL SDR DANISH RAND $87.35 -3.15 2,395.00 31.00 $12.47 -0.04 $71.56 -0.16 $63.97 -0.08 305.95 306.45 306.95 399.6319 400.285 400.9381 345.7541 346.3191 346.8842 304.1252 304.6223 305.1193 2.7324 2.7369 2.7414 0.5085 0.5185 0.5285 424.7336 425.4277 426.1218 45.5837 45.6586 45.7336 81.5845 81.7178 81.8512 425.2705 425.9655 426.6605 46.3392 46.4149 46.4907 . 21.697 21.7325 21.768 CBN Exchange rate as at 17/04/2019 company, Mr. Wiebe Boer blamed this development on bad-grid investment decisions in the power sector value chain. He said: “There are enormous bad-grid investment opportunities in high-density low-income urban areas in Nigeria. This is not just a deeply rural play. “Nigeria is coming from over four decades of underinvestment in the power sector, resulting in 120 million Nigerians in either a nogrid or bad-grid situation. “This is more people than the entire population of the next largest African country and almost the population of all of the rest of West Africa. The energy gap serves as the foundation for a lot of the challenges the nation faces; health, education, insecurity, unemployment, environmental pollution, amongst others. “We have an installed capacity of approximately 10,000 megawatts, MW and a distributed capacity of just over 4,000MW on Vanguard, THURSDAY, APRIL 18 , 2019 — 19 a good day; to serve a population of about 198 million persons in 2019, despite numerous projections to increase capacity over the years that have not materialized. “This is not acceptable. We cannot continue to be the nation of perpetual darkness. We cannot continue to normalize this and just accept that in Nigeria power will always be a problem – and the national excuse for why we haven’t achieved what we should have as a nation. “We need to make sure that the on-grid and off-grid section of the power chain do not drift apart so wide that they cannot seek common ground. The power gap is too massive for either one to solve, and we are better off through collaboration”. MOU: From left: Segun Opeke, Directorate Head, Lagos Directorate, Polaris Bank; Ms. Chantelle Abdul, MD Mojec International; Abdullahi Mohammed, Executive Director, Abuja/ Northern Region; Mrs Mojisola Abdul, Chairperson Mojec International; Innocent Ike, Executive Director, Technology & Services, Polaris Bank, at the MoU signing ceremony between Polaris Bank & Mojec Int’l on retail financing scheme for MAP meter acquisition scheme for Nigerians in Lagos Foreign investors withdraw N94bn from stock market in 2 months By Nkiruka Nnorom Foreign investors have withdrawn N94.09 billion from the Nigerian stock market in the first two months of the year as the equities market continues to tumble. The total foreign outflow represents 56.7 percent of total foreign portfolio commitment in the stock market during the two month period and outpaced foreign portfolio inflow, which stood at N71.74 billion, by 23.8 percent. Total foreign investors’ stake in the market stood at N165.8 billion within the period. Breakdown of monthly foreign inflows, according to Data on Foreign & Domestic Portfolio Participation on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE, shows that foreign outflows increased by 5.20 percent month-on-month (MoM) from N37.11 billion in December 2018 to N39.04 billion in January, while it rose by 41 percent MoM in February to N55.02 billion. Analysts at United Capital Plc explained that the current risk-off sentiment in the market may have something to do with investor uncertainty, as markets are coming to terms with the policy implications (and the resulting impact on the macro-economy) of President Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election. The firm in a report themed, “FPIs are selling Stocks but buying T-Bills & Bonds, Why?”, affirmed that the recently concluded full year 2018 earnings season, as well as the reduction in the monetary policy rate (MPR), have failed to support or trigger a bull run in the stock market, adding that investors probably want to see bold policy moves that can put Nigeria on the path to a more sustainable long-term growth. Looking ahead, the analysts said: “Over 2018, many investors withdrew from emerging and frontier markets (Nigeria inclusive) and bought more assets in the US due to the spike in US bond yields, as well as the appreciating dollar. Worsened by election uncertainty, the Nigerian equity market saw a net foreign outflow to the tune of N66.2 billion over 2018, compared to net foreign inflows of N336.9 billion in 2017.’’ Access Bank declares N45bn pre-tax profit for Q1 By Nkiruka Nnorom Access Bank Plc has declared N45.10 billion as Profit Before Tax, for its first quarter ended March 31, 2019, representing 64.4 percent increase compared to N27.44 billion posted in the corresponding quarter in Q1’18. Highlights of the bank’s Q1 financial statement released on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE, showed that the bank’s earnings rose by 16.4 percent to N160.12 billion on the back of 9.1 percent increase in interest income. Its net assets also was up 17.5 percent to N576.47 billion from N490.51 billion in Q1’18, while the interest income rose to N95.12 billion from N87.24 billion. The basic earnings per share at N1.39 kobo was 80.5 percent increase compared to N0.77 in the corresponding period in 2018. Commenting, Herbert Wigwe, Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Access Bank, said: “The group delivered solid earnings underscoring the value potentials of the newly expanded business model. Gross earnings showed a16 percent increase to N160.1 billion from the prior year, comprising strong earnings on interest income and non-interest income of 69 percent and 31 percent respectively, whilst Profit before Tax (PBT) grew by 66 percent to GTBank reports N57bn profit for Q1’19 By Babajide Komolafe Guaranty Trust Bank Plc yesterday released its unaudited financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2019 (Q1’19), which showed that profit before tax (PBT) rose by 8.3 percent to N57 billion during the quarter. A statement from the bank said: “Gross earnings for the period grew by 1.2 percent to N110.3 billion from N109 billion posted in March 2018. Profit before tax improved to N57 billion from N52.6 billion recorded in the corresponding period of March 2018, representing a growth of 8.3 percent. Customers’ deposits also rose by 6.0 percent to N2.410 trillion in March 2019 from N2.274 trillion in December 2018, whilst the Bank’s Loan book grew by 1.6 percent from N1.262 trillion as at December 2018 to N1.282trillion in March 2019. “Balance sheet remained strong with the Bank closing the quarter ended March 31, 2019 with Total Assets of N3.556 trillion and Shareholders’ Funds of N627.2 billion. In terms of Assets quality, NPL ratio and Cost of Risk closed 7.03 percent and 0.05 percent in March 2019 from 7.30 percent and 0.34 percent in December 2018 respectively.” Commenting, Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Guaranty Trust Bank Plc, Mr Segun Agbaje, said; “Going into 2019, we knew that it would be a challenging year, but our strategy and unwavering focus on delivering value for our customers and shareholders continues to underpin our ability to consistently deliver solid results despite changing market variables. We carried on the momentum of the previous year, posting strong growth in earnings, effectively managing costs and leveraging our digital-first customer-centric strategy to deliver world-class services that are simple, cheap and easily accessible.” He further stated that: “Whilst ensuring the long-term growth of our business is the greatest value that we can create for our communities, we are also leveraging our resources, expertise and network to help people thrive. That’s why, from April 28 to May 1, 2019, we are organizing the biggest food and drink festival in Africa to give small businesses in the food industry the platform, network and access to the markets that they need to grow.” N45.1billion “Our capital and liquidity position remained above regulatory levels, with CAR at 19.5 percent and liquidity ratio of 47.6 percent further demonstrating the capacity of the enlarged balance sheet to cope with possible negative shocks. Following the successful completion of the merger with Diamond Bank in March 2019, we have now fully positioned ourselves in the retail market with a view to bringing the power of banking to the doorsteps of millions. “We are providing a broader platform to facilitate payments services in Nigeria and across Africa, by harnessing our significantly enhanced digital technology capabilities.”
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Page 17: Life after insurgency IWAS in Maidu
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18042019 - PRESIDENTIAL TUSSLE:I always beat you in every election, Buhari tells Atiku

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