SENATE PRESIDENCY: NORTH EAST HOPEFUL, AS TINUBU ‘PENCILS’ AUDU OGBEH FOR SGF

 BARING last minute changes, the South East geopolitical zone might have finally lost the position of Secretary to Government of the Federation to the North Central zone.
Investigation by The Guardian revealed that the plan to move the position away from the South East was thrown up by the National leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s insistence that the South West should produce the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
It comes as a group of North Central lawmakers have distanced themselves from the purported endorsement of Femi Gbajabiamila as Speaker of the House of Representatives.
On Friday, a statement published in some national dailies under the North Central caucus purportedly endorsed Gbajabiamila with the names of Emmanuel Udende, Chris Adabah, Orker Jev, Mark Gbilah, and Adamu Entonu listed among the members.
But in a statement issued at the weekend in Abuja yesterday, the members whose names were among the 20 elected lawmakers who purportedly signed the endorsement said they were not consulted before the publication was made.
“We want to make it abundantly clear that at no time did we sit to endorse Hon. Gbajabiamila as Speaker. Our names were only added to the list and we didn’t sign the notice.

“We are still awaiting the decision of the APC on zoning of National Assembly leadership positions. Both our constituents and Nigerians should be guided,” the group said.
A member of the one of the committees set up to thrash out the issue of zoning of positions in the APC confided in The Guardian Friday night in Abuja that Tinubu has penciled down a one time National Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Audu Ogbeh, to occupy the post of SGF.

PHOTOS: HOW CHINESE BILLIONAIRE TAKES 6,400 STAFF ON HOLIDAY TO PARIS; COSTS HIM ABOUT $50M

Chinese billionaire, Li Jinyuan, the chairman Tiens Group Company, has taken 6,400 of his staff on a 4-day holiday to France which finished with a world-record breaking human chain in Cote D'Azur.

According to Mail Online, Jinyuan, 57, (pictured in white) booked up 140 hotels in Paris where the group visited the Louvre and various cultural sites in one of the world's most famous and revered cities. The huge group of tourists then made their way to the glamorous Cote D'Azur, where they booked 4,760 rooms in 79 four-and five-star hotels in Cannes and Monaco.

It took 147 buses to take the tourists from their hotels to the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, where Guinness World Record officials where on hand to validate the world's biggest ever human chain.

The 6,400 employees arranged themselves to spell out the phrase 'Tiens' dream is Nice in the Cote d'Azur', to celebrate 20 years of partnership between the Chinese company and the French region.

France is expected to be 33million Euros better off thanks to the all-expenses-paid staff trip.
The group were expected to spend 13million euros in Paris, home of the Eiffel Tower, the Arc De Triomph and The Louvre.   

IS BUHARI READY FOR INTERNET GENERATION, SOCIAL MEDIA, FREE SPEECH?

In your opinion, do you think General Buhari is ready for you people, the internet generation? Can he handle you lot? Do you think he’s ready for social media, free speech and democracy? I ask because I saw an interesting article on Sahara Reporters by a guy named Paul Omoruyi where he asked really important questions regarding the president-elect and new media. Some of what he wrote below...

Buhari’s government had a bad rap sheet for purportedly using military decree (the popular Decree 4) to incarcerate two Guardian Newspaper writers, Ndukar Irabor and Tunde Thompson. Although it appears Nigerians have “forgiven” the General for some of those undemocratic measures of the past, the question now is: can “President Buhari” take the same “social media inferno” that President Jonathan was baked in throughout his presidency? Can President Buhari come to terms with the new social media world? One thing is certain; Nigerians will use social media to caricature him, probe his government and hold him accountable for those he surrounds himself with.

NIGERIANS TOOK JONATHAN’S MEEKNESS FOR WEAKNESS, RESTRAINT FOR LACK OF STRENGTH – OKUPE

The The Senior Special Assistant to the President Jonathan on Public Affairs. Mr Doyin Okupe has again said that Nigerians miss took Jonathan’s meekness for weakness, restraint for lack of strength, reticence for inaction and calmness for indecisiveness.
Okupe made this known on his Facebook post, Sunday after the Thanksgiving and Farewell service in honour of President Jonathan and the First Lady, at the Church of the Advent, Abuja.
His post reads
“A thanksgiving service was held in honour of President Jonathan and his wife. It was a lovely event though quite an emotional one too. I saw eminent men and women dabbed their eyes. I struggled with mine.
This is part of the disengaging ceremonies.

Wole Soyinka And A Fabricated Controversy By ‘Tope Oriola

The venue was Afribank, Oke-Ilewo, Abeokuta, Ogun state. My father had sent me to the bank to make the type of withdrawal a high school student could handle — well, in those “non-open-eye” days. I had instructions to say hello to the bank manager, a friend of my father. There he was descending the stairs as I ascended. He had his trademark couture top and black trousers. A legend walking the streets of the Ancient City. A symbol yet a real person described in thousands of stories, tales, facts and anecdotes. We had no verbal interactions and it was not yet the era of selfies; therefore the normative economy of the hyper-visual was absent.

It was to be a transformative non-encounter. Such was the profundity of Wole Soyinka’s mere presence that a few days later when asked about my future career by my producer at NTA Channel 12 Abeokuta, I said I wanted to become a professor. He said I would need a “PhD”. I didn’t know what a PhD was at the time but I remember telling my “Weekend Delight” producer: “I guess I have to get a PhD”. The desire to become a university professor was permanently etched on my mind.

Read How Students Cheat In Exam Halls

As senior secondary school pupils take their final examinations,  Ashiwaju.org writes about some of the ways candidates cheat during examinations

On January 4, 2014, 15 persons returned certificates issued to them by the West African Examination Council. During their individual exams, which spanned from 1983 to 2010, the 15 persons confessed that they were involved in various forms of exam malpractices, including impersonation. But now, as ‘born-again’ Christians, they said they could not live with the ‘sin’ anymore.

Similarly, on February 24, 2015, WAEC published a list of 178 candidates, who returned their certificates on the basis of being ‘born-again’ and seeking restitution. They reportedly confessed to hiring people to sit exams for them.

NNPC subsidiary under fire over N591bn oil assets

The inability of the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company Limited, a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, to fully develop all oil fields under its control has limited the expansion of the nation’s oil and gas industry, experts have said.

They have thus recommended that indigenous private firms with capacity and expertise should be granted the right to operate those assets to ramp up the exploration and production in the country.

According to an audit report by PricehousewaterCoopers, the NPDC is estimated to have operatorship in assets worth $3bn (about N591bn, based on N197 to a dollar.

Speakership: Gbajabiamila, Dogara split state caucuses

The jostle by four senators to succeed Senate President, David Mark, on June 4, has shifted to the aspirants going after their colleagues in the six geo – political zones, seeking their endorsements.

The four senators who have so far made public, their decision to contest the race are, Bukola Saraki (Kwara Central); George Akume (Benue North); Ahmad Lawan (Yobe North), and Ali Ndume (Borno South).

Our correspondent learnt that Saraki for instance, allegedly mobilised about 64 senators-elect drawn from both the All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party, to the Niger Hall at Transcorp Hotel in Abuja on Wednesday night where the lawmakers were said to have endorsed him.

Going to US is like jumping into fire —Kashamu

Senator-elect and a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party in Ogun State, Mr. Buruji Kashamu, on Saturday, denied any past trip to the United States and ruled out any possibility of ever visiting the country in the future.

In an interview with Sahara TV, which was monitored by our correspondent, the PDP chieftain likened such a visit to leaping into fire.

Asked by the interviewer to clarify his alleged involvement in a United States criminal case as detailed in a popular prison memoir-turned-TV series by American, Piper Kerman, Kashamu refuted the claims.

PHOTOS:Government Should not be Involved in Hospital, Education Management Business-----Obi

The former Governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi Saturday said Government should not be involved in hospital and education management business.

 He said this yesterday at the jubilee celebration of St. Charles Borromeo Hospital, Onitsha.

Obi who was variously eulogized as the architect of the projects that were commissioned - ultra-modern School of Nursing and other projects- to commemorate the jubilee celebration, said that he decided to partner with the Church especially in education and health care delivery because the church was better at managing those institutions. Though he recognized the importance of government, but he said that Government role should best be supervisory. "I mean, look at the projects the hospital delivered in partnership with the Church. If it were entirely by the Government, I am sure today they will be in variation stage", Obi said.