21042021

VANGUARD, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21, 2021 — 25
Chadian President, Deby dies
on frontline •Son named Interim
CHAD’s newly reelected
President
Idriss Deby Itno has died
of injuries while fighting
rebels in the north of the
Sahel country.
The shocking announcement
came only
the day after the 68-yearold
was proclaimed the
winner of a presidential
election that had given
him a sixth term in office.
The army said Deby had
been commanding his
army at the weekend as
it battled against rebels
who had launched a major
incursion into the
north of the country on
election day.
Deby “has just
breathed his last breath
defending the sovereign
nation on the battlefield,”
army spokesman General
Azem Bermandoa Agouna
said in a statement
read out on state television.
Deby, 68, had ruled
Chad for three decades
but was a key ally in the
West’s anti-jihadist campaign
in the troubled
Sahel region.
The army said a military
council led by the
late president’s 37-yearold
son Mahamat Idriss
Deby Itno, a four-star
general, would replace
him.
On Monday, the army
had claimed a “great victory”
in its battle against
the rebels from neighbouring
Libya, saying it
had killed 300 fighters,
with the loss of five soldiers
in its own ranks
during eight days of
combat.
Deby would have been
one of the longest-serving
leaders in the world,
after provisional results
showed him winning the
April 11 election.
He was a herder’s son
from the Zaghawa ethnic
group who took the classic
path to power
through the army and
relished the military culture.
His latest election victory
— with almost 80
percent of the vote —
had never been in doubt,
with a divided opposition,
boycott calls, and a
campaign in which demonstrations
were banned
or dispersed.
Deby had campaigned
George Floyd's killer, Derek
Chauvin convicted of murder
DEREK Chauvin has
been found guilty of
second-degree unintentional
murder, third-degree
murder and seconddegree
manslaughter in
the death of George
Floyd.
The jury returned its verdict
on Tuesday afternoon
after ten and a half hours
of deliberation.
As the verdict was read
out Chauvin looked on silently
in the Hennepin
County courtroom where
jurors spent three weeks
listening to testimony
about the day Floyd died
under the weight of the 45-
year-old cop's knee during
an arrest on May 25, 2020.
Judge Peter Cahill
thanked the jury on behalf
of the state of Minnesota
for not only jury service,
but also ‘heavy duty jury
service.’ The state moved
immediately to have
Chauvin’s bail revoked
pending sentencing which
will happen in eight weeks.
Judge Cahill did so and
Chauvin was remanded
into custody taken from
the courtroom in handcuffs.
Chauvin faces a maximum
sentence of 40 years
in prison on the top
charge. Floyd’s younger
brother, Philonise, 39, who
took a knee at the courthouse
steps at the start of
the trial, was in court to
hear the verdict read.
Cheers rose from the
crowds that had gathered
outside the courthouse
and down at the intersection
of 38th and Chicago
now known as George
Floyd Square. Cup Foods,
the store in which Floyd
Leader by Army
was last seen alive, shuttered
its doors ahead of the
decision.
The jury sent their notice
that a verdict had been
reached at 2.30pm local
time as Minneapolis and
the country braced for potential
violence stemming
from the decision. Jurors
had not sent back any
questions to the judge or
asked to review any of the
hours of video or hundreds
of exhibits entered in the
course of the trial.
The verdict came just
hours after President Joe
Biden called the evidence
against Chauvin 'overwhelming'
and revealed he
called Floyd's family to
share his support after the
jury retired on Monday
evening.
on a promise of bringing
peace and security to the
region, but his pledges
were undermined by the
rebel incursion.
The government had
sought on Monday to
assure concerned residents
that the offensive
was over.
The tanks were later
withdrawn apart from a
perimeter around the
president’s office,
which is under heavy
security during normal
times.
“The establishment of
a security deployment
in certain areas of the
capital seems to have
been misunderstood,”
government spokesman
Cherif Mahamat Zene
had said on Twitter on
Monday.
“There is no particular
threat to fear.”
However, the US embassy
in N’Djamena
had on Saturday ordered
non-essential
personnel to leave the
country, warning of possible
violence in the
capital. Britain also
urged its nationals to
leave.
France’s embassy
said in an advisory to
its nationals in Chad
that the deployment
was a precaution and
there was no specific
threat to the capital.
The rebel raid in the
provinces of Tibesti and
Kanem was carried out
by the Front for Change
and Concord in Chad
(FACT), based in Libya.
The group has a nonaggression
pact with
Khalifa Haftar, a military
strongman who
controls much of Libya’s
east.
FACT, a group mainly
made up of the Saharan
Goran people,
said in a statement Sunday
that it had “liberated”
the Kanem region.
Such claims in remote
desert combat zones are
difficult to verify.
Former U.S. Vice President
Walter Mondale dies at 93
WALTER Mondale,
a leading liberal
Democratic voice of the
late 20th century who
was U.S. vice president
under Jimmy Carter and
lost in a landslide to
Ronald Reagan in the
1984 presidential election,
died on Monday at
age 93, his family said.
“Well my time has
come. I am eager to rejoin
Joan and Eleanor,”
Mondale said in a statement
to his staff and released
to the public after
his death, referring to his
late wife Joan, who died
in 2014, and daughter
Eleanor, who died in
2011 at age 51. “Before I
go I wanted to let you
know how much you
mean to me.”
Mondale, the first major
U.S. party presidential
nominee to pick a
woman running mate,
believed in an activist
government and worked
for civil rights, school
integration, consumer
protection and farm and
labor interests as a U.S.
senator and vice president
during Carter’s
troubled one-term presidency
from 1977 to 1981.
He also served as U.S.
ambassador to Japan
from 1993 to 1996 under
Bill Clinton.
:Vanguard News
:@vanguardnews
Govt Corporations remit N2.15trn
as ‘Operating Surplus' —FRC
By Gabriel Ewepu
ABUJA—THE Fiscal Re
sponsibility Commission,
FRC, yesterday, disclosed that
government's corporations remitted
over N2.15 trillion as
'operating surplus' into the Consolidated
Revenue Fund of the
Federal Government.
Chairman, FRC, Victor Muruako,
disclosed this while on a
courtesy visit to the Minister of
Special Duties and Inter-Governmental
Affairs, Dr George
Akume.
He said: "The Commission
produced a template for the
calculation of Operating Surplus.
The Template has, for over
four years, helped the Commission
face agencies with huge
debt and has reversed the negative
balance of Government
finances through operating
surplus. As at today, the Commission
had caused over N2.15
trillion to be paid into the Consolidated
Revenue Fund of
Government.
While highlighting achieve-
ments of the Commission, Muruako
pointed out that in line
with the mandate of ensuring
prudence, accountability and
transparent fiscal management
in the country as contained in
Section 2: 1 (A) and Section 30
of the Fiscal Responsibility Act,
2007, the FRC embarked on
physical verification and inspection
of completed and on-going
government projects.
He added that the projects are
derived from the quarterly Budget
Implementation Report submitted
to the Commission by the
Budget Office of the Federation,
and that these projects cover all
the Ministries, Departments and
Agencies, MDAs, of the Federal
Government, and the exercise
has been going on for over seven
years.
He said: "Monitoring and
Evaluation of the annual budget
Regular publication of funds
released to the three tiers of Government
as well as timeline for
the audit of the Federal Government
account; Over N2.15 trillion
paid into the Consolidated
Revenue Fund of the Federal
Government over the past years
as Operating Surplus from
government corporations
against just about N7 billion
government allocation to the
agency since inception, Provision
of technical Assistance to
states and local governments
that enact Fiscal Responsibility
laws and bye-Laws that are
similar to FRA, 2007".
However Muruako called
for collaboration with the
Ministry of Special Duties and
Inter-Governmental Affairs to
organize a National Fiscal Responsibility
Forum for Local
Government Chairmen and
Councillors to basically inculcate
the principle of prudent
management of resources,
transparency and accountability
Ẇhile responding to the
FRC boss, the Minister of Special
Duties and Inter-Governmental
Affairs, Sen George
Akume, charged the FRC to
beam its searchlight on the
three tiers of government.
FG launches SOPs for civil service
By Dirisu Yakubu
ABUJA—THE Federal
Government yesterday
launched the Standard Operating
Procedures, SOPs, for the
civil service.
The SOPs were developed to
enhance professionalism and
quicken service delivery processes
in the conduct of government
business. The procedures,
an initiative of the Africa Initiative
for Governance, AIG, in
collaboration with the Office
of the Head of the Civil Service
of the Federation, OHCSF, are
aimed at assisting officers to understand
and document
records digitally.
Addressing newsmen at the
event, Head of the Civil Service
of the Federation, Dr. Folasade
Yemi-Esan commended the expertise
brought to bear in the
design of the procedures by AIG
noting that with the SOPs now
in place, the service will come
up "with an effective system that
complies with industry-specific
regulations and standards to
significantly reduce or avoid
operational errors as well as
unwanted work variations."
She continued: "SOPs also
ensure the repeatability and consistency
of the performance of
any type of process. It helps employees
to perform complicated
tasks, one in which remembering
every detail of a procedure
can be difficult or in which
a precise sequence of steps is
essential.
"It is instructive to note that
in view of the importance of
the SOP manuals to the seamless
implementation of the Enterprise
Content Management
Solution, ECMS, and in line
with international best practices,
the office decided to take
the lead and has gone further
to approve the immediate service-wide
development of
SOPs starting with four selected
Ministries Departments
and Agencies made up of the
Federal Civil Service Commission,
Federal Ministry of
Finance, Budget and National
Planning, State House and
the Federal Ministry of Transportation,"
she added.