This is to inform the general public who are willing to deposit their old Naira notes that CBN has put the following guideline :
1-Go to CBN website and fill an online form to generate a code or Come along with the money to the nearest CBN Branch in your state to obtain the form and fill
2- Come along with any means of identification Card,
3- A teller would be issued to you at the CBN
– The operation start from 9am to 2pm ,from 13th of Feb- to 17th
-The deadline is Friday 17-2023
Please come early so that they would attend you in time
Femi Gbajabiamila, the speaker of the House of Representatives, has attributed the current hardship occasioned by fuel and naira scarcity to “elements” bent on scuttling APC presidential candidate Bola Tinubu’s victory at the February 25 poll.
Mr Gbajabiamila stated this in Lagos on Tuesday during the launching of the second phase of a transport initiative called ‘Gbaja Ride’ for his Surulere constituents. The 35 low-fare buses will ply different routes in Surulere and its environs.
“As your representative and speaker, I have a good understanding of the current hardships and discomfort being faced by many Nigerians, without exception to my constituents,” Mr Gbajabiamila explained. “The lower legislative chamber under my leadership has been on the side of the people, working tirelessly to rescue them from these difficulties. I am glad that the judiciary has also confirmed our position on the implementation of the policy of naira redesign.”
He explained that the new naira banknotes policy was a well-thought-out one, which had unfortunately been hijacked and politicised, alleging that some elements created a crisis around the policy to stop Mr Tinubu from becoming the next president.
Mr Gbajabiamila said the plot seemed to be failing as Nigerians still keep faith with the APC and Mr Tinubu despite the chaos following the naira scarcity.
“Nobody can convince me that it is not a plot to stop Asiwaju from becoming the president of this country. But I am glad that our God is a wonderful being as the plot these people sat together to hatch, he has intervened,” said Mr Gbajabiamila.
He added, “I have followed the campaign team to the East, North and everywhere with Asiwaju, and I doff my hat for Nigerians.”
When I opened my WhatsApp on Saturday, I saw a higher than usual volume of messages and forwards from friends. The first one I opened was a riotously uneducated, sidesplittingly error-ridden, indefensibly malapropistic press statement attacking me for calling out the Supreme Court’s bizarre perversion of justice in recognizing Senate President Ahmed Lawan as Yobe North’s APC senatorial candidate when he didn’t participate in a primary election.
The statement was such an uproariously juvenile drivel that I sincerely thought it was written by someone who was trying his hand at textual comedy—following the wild success of online video comic skits.
I laughed hysterically as I read the statement. Who won’t laugh after reading of “abysmal pit of irredeemable ignorance,” “convoluted anger,” “caution-gate of self-control,” “pen-happy Kperogi,” “mood of bellicose jingoism,” “ineptly scripted toxic article,” and several other hilariously sophomoric howlers?
I opened another WhatsApp message and found that the press statement was headline news in all major newspapers in Nigeria. That was when I realized that it wasn’t a comedic script written by a barely literate high schooler choking on the ill-digested vocabularies he swallowed hurriedly; it was actually an official statement from Nigeria’s Supreme Court! Good gracious!
Facility for and proficiency in language (in Nigeria’s case the English language) and mastery of logic are as central to the job of lawyers and judges as stethoscopes are to the job of a physician. But here’s a Supreme Court that can’t write a statement that isn’t a ludicrous travesty of the language it uses for official business.
I’d never heard of the Supreme Court of any country responding to the criticism of its judgment by singling out a private individual who called them out. This is a world record of supreme infantilism.
Well, the fact that they had a need to isolate my criticism and pour such venom on me shows that I hit them at the right spot, that I exposed an uncomfortable truth about them that they’d thought had been hidden from public knowledge, which is basically that most of them are rapacious, unprincipled, conscienceless, and cash-and-carry judges who sell “justice” to the highest bidder.
The current Chief Justice of Nigeria, in fact, makes no pretenses about where his financially induced political biases lie. The other day, he was invited by Governor Nyesom Wike to commission projects during which he made openly partisan political statements and turned himself into Wike’s pitiful praise poet.
When I called him out, he issued a statement to deny making the politically compromising statements he made in Port Harcourt that I’d quoted. But after I shared the video clip of him saying exactly what he denied saying–and more–he shut up but bottled up the anger and bile that welled up in him, which he ventilated yesterday using the opportunity that my biting censure of the Supreme Court provided.
The truth is that he violated Rule 1(5) of the Judicial Code of Conduct, which says that “a judge must avoid social relationships that are improper…. or that may cast doubt on the ability of a Judicial Officer to decide cases impartially.”
So, it is either that Justice Olukayode Ariwoola is a fundamentally dishonest person who lies blatantly, or he was so helplessly inebriated by Wike’s treats that he didn’t know what he was saying in Port Harcourt, which is frankly a distinction without a difference.
The cockamamie judgments that have been emanating from the Supreme Court lately reflect the character—or lack thereof—of the man who leads it. Of course, he is not alone in this brazen-faced, in-your-face moral depravity. Most of his colleagues are also purchasable judicial mountebanks with zero self-worth. Thank God for the few honest ones among them.
In its embarrassingly rambling, incoherent riot of a press statement attacking me, the Supreme Court didn’t say a word about the judicial merit of its judgement. It only says it’s not “Father Christmas” and that “no one can get what he or she didn’t ask for.”
In other words, the Court is confessing that it doesn’t dispense justice to whoever deserves it; its “justice” is the exclusive preserve of people who “ask for” it, which is obviously code for those who pay for it. That’s straight-up judicial banditry!
But here are the issues. During the senate confirmation hearing of former CJN Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad (another hopelessly inept and compromised CJN that left his position in disgrace), Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe called attention to the legal and moral burden of overlooking the merit of cases before the Supreme Court on the basis of “mere technicality.”
“In the 2018 case of Akeredolu vs Abraham, the Supreme Court said, ‘technicality in the administration of justice shuts out justice.’…It is therefore better to have a case heard and determined on its merit than to leave the court with the shield of victory obtained on mere technicality,” Abaribe said.
In other words, the Supreme Court had laid a precedent that says the Court should not invoke procedural inanities as a pretext to subvert the legal merit of cases, which is precisely what Ariwoola’s Supreme Court did in Lawan’s case—and most cases involving generous bribe givers.
In my July 20, 2019, column titled “A ‘Technically’ Incompetent Chief Justice of Nigeria,” I wrote: “All over the world, courts rely on precedents to adjudicate current cases. Precedents may be modified, but they are rarely overturned without a compelling reason, certainly not within a few years after they were established. That is what legal scholars call stare decisis, that is, the doctrine that courts should follow precedent.”
A senior lawyer who followed my articles on the Ahmed Lawan case had told me months ago that I should forget thinking I could change anything and preserve my intellectual energies for more productive causes because the Supreme Court had already been “settled” and would deliver tendentious judgements to legitimize the electoral frauds by politicians who were too busy running for president to have time to participate in the primary elections for senatorial positions.
It was hard to believe, but it happened exactly as he said it would. So, the Supreme Court already had a conclusion (i.e., that big men with money to “spoil” Supreme Court justices must get what they “ask for,” to use the statement from the Court) and were merely searching for “evidence” to support the conclusion, instead of the other way around.
They invented the “evidence” in “technicalities,” which their own precedent had invalidated. In rhetorical studies we call that finalism.
That’s why it’s customary to say that “judgment” and “justice” are not synonymous. Some judgements pervert justice. The Nigerian Supreme Court in the last few years has shown that it’s not in the business of dispensing justice; it only gives judgments to favor people who “ask for it” the “right” way. They are not the “Father Christmas” of justice. They are wolfish judicial bandits who operate a judgment-for-sale racket with impunity.
At this rate, this Supreme Court of judicial bandits may give us a “Supreme Court president,” that is, a person who comes fourth (a la Hope Uzodinma of Imo State) in the presidential election but who has enough money to “ask for” a favorable judgement from the two-bit mercenary charlatans at the Supreme Court.
In June 2020, Malawians took to the streets and the judges joined to resist the attempt by President Peter Mutharika to fire Chief Justice Andrew Nyirenda in order to enable him rig a presidential re-run. The people trusted the Chief Justice more than the president, so they got rid of the president in order to keep the Chief Justice. One month later, in Mali, an uprising began when an unpopular ruling party used the Constitutional Court to rob the opposition of its victories, eventually leading to the dissolution of the court and a military coup.
Judicial immersion in political disputes is hazardous and judges called upon to do it have a clear choice to either resist importunations that compromise their authority or canoodle with the politicians at the risk of irremediable damage to judicial office. Nigeria’s Supreme Court appears to have made its choice and the consequences are unflattering.
At the beginning of 2019, President Muhammadu Buhari procured the termination of a Chief Justice of Nigeria in a manner that manifestly flouted the constitution. A public long inured to the machinations of a judiciary many of whose senior members appeared to treat their judicial oaths with levity, chose not to take notice.
This denouement was long in the making. On 18 January 2008, Nigeria’s Supreme Court installed Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi as Governor of Rivers State in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. Mr. Amaechi scored 6,527 out of 6,577 votes cast in the primaries organized by the then ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) ahead of the governorship election on 14 April, 2007. The party hierarchy duly forwarded his name to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as its candidate.
However, on 2 February 2007, the party withdrew Mr. Amaechi’s name and asked INEC, then chaired by an alchemist called Maurice Iwu, to substitute in his stead one Celestine Omehia who did not participate in the primaries. Mr. Amaechi sued to challenge the substitution but while the case was pending, the party dismissed him from the PDP; INEC then organized the elections, declaring Mr. Omehia the validly elected governor of Rivers State.
In a judgment of unprecedented audacity, the Supreme Court on 25 October, 2007, sacked Omehia, affirming Amaechi as the winner in which he did not campaign. In reasons issued on 18 January 2008, Adesola Oguntade, the Supreme Court Justice who delivered the lead judgment with which all six other justices on the panel concurred, said: “the sum total of the recent decisions of this court is that the court must move away from the era when adjudicatory power of the court was hindered by a constraining adherence to technicalities. This often results in the loser in a civil case taking home all the laurels while the supposed winner goes home in a worse situation than he approached the court.”
Olayiwola Aderemi, another Justice on the panel, added: “The judgments of this court must not be final only in name, but must be seen to be really final in the sense that they have legal bite that makes the judgments truly conclusive. All issues that will make its judgments reasonable and conclusive must be clearly addressed by the Supreme Court. This court has a standing and rigid invitation to do substantial justice to all matters brought before it. Justice to be dispensed by this court must not be allowed to be inhibited by any paraphernalia of technicalities.”
Whether the Supreme Court has any memory of having issued these is now questionable. On 13 January, 2020, the Court issued a decision by which it declared as winner, the man who came fourth in the 2019 election for Governor of Imo State. To arrive at that wonderment, the court relied solely on the evidence of a manifestly crooked deputy commissioner of police with a wizard’s calling in conjuring up votes from ghosts. Invited to review an evidently perverse outcome the following month, a majority of the court framed the question as a challenge to their existence, making avoidable fetish out of an outcome that brought the court to manifest disrepute.
One Justice, Chima Nweze, from Enugu State (not far from Imo State, the theatre of this judicial magic), dissented, warning with remarkable prescience that the judgment “will sooner or later haunt our electoral jurisprudence.” The judgment accomplished more, however; Imo State promptly descended into anarchy under the rule of a Governor voted for exclusively by Supreme Court Justices none of whom will ever live near Imo State.
The Supreme Court appears not to have taken any notice though. In Yobe North Senatorial Zone, in north-east Nigeria, Bashir Sheriff Machina emerged in May 2022 as the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to fly its flag in the contest to represent the constituency in the Senate in the 2023 general election in primaries monitored by INEC. That seat also happens to be occupied by the current Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, who has been in the National Assembly since 1999. In June 2022, Dr. Lawan sought and lost the ticket of the party for the presidency. INEC did not monitor any other APC primary for the Senate in Yobe North, so no other person could have emerged validly besides Machina.
Yet, on 6 February, 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that Ahmed Lawan, who did not participate in the only valid primary, was the APC’s candidate for the Yobe North Senate seat. Conveniently disregarding its own decision 15 years earlier requiring the court “to do substantial justice to all matters brought before it”, a three-person majority hinged its decision on the jaw-dropping premise that the lower courts lacked jurisdiction to question bare-faced robbery perpetrated against the winner because an originating summons was the wrong form of action by which to commence the proceedings. Chima Nweze, who dissented when the case affected his people in south-east Nigeria wrote the lead judgment this time while Adamu Jauro, the Supreme Court Justice from Gombe which borders Yobe State in north-east Nigeria, dissented.
Machina sued by originating summons because a Practice Direction by the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court in July 2022 required that. If he failed to comply, the Court would have declined his case. The Supreme Court punished him for complying with the rules of court applicable when he sued. To achieve that, a five-person panel of the court effectively overruled long-established precedent which only a seven-person panel can.
The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, has said the February 10 deadline of the circulation of old naira notes stands, Odogwublog reports.
Emefiele made the disclosure while briefing the diplomatic community at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Abuja on Tuesday.
“The situation is substantially calming down since the commencement of over-the-counter payments to complement ATM disbursements and the use of super-agents. There is, therefore, no need to consider any shift from the deadline of February 10,” he said.
The clarification is coming on the heels of confusion over the supreme court order which extended the deadline to February 15, pending the hearing by the court.
Nigerians were thrown into confusion as commercial banks refused to take the old notes at their branches on Monday.
Speaking further, Emefiele said, “Some of our leaders are buying the new notes and storing them for whatever purpose and I will not expand further on that.”
Emefiele said the apex bank acknowledges the suffering of Nigerians, noting that effective implementation of the policy could scrap 4% of the inflation numbers.
He further explained that the optimal volume of cash in circulation should be around N700billion.
He said: “Even if we say N1trillion should be in circulation, we cannot refloat N3.7trillion into circulation.”
One of the spokespersons for the All Progressives Congress, APC, Presidential Campaign Council, Bayo Onanuga, has been caught sharing a fake news about the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi.
The former Anambra governor has been consistent in his position that he never got a plot of land as Chief Executive of the state and more than 9 years after leaving office, he has never collected anything from the government as entitlement.
In effort to discredit Obi, Onanuga, in a now deleted tweet accused the Labour Party Candidate of lying.
Peter Obi claimed he never got a plot of land while Governor of Anambra State. The Labour Party Candidate lies again. He is busted with a letter of land allocation.
However, when it became obvious to the Tinubu’s Spokesman that he has lied as Netizens flooded the post with Peter Obi’s letter rejecting the offer, he quickly deleted the post.
Onanuga on Saturday, described Peter Obi’s city walk as an uncivilized way to campaign in Lagos State.
Good Governance Ministry -GGM has noted the misleading information being ditched out to the members of the Public by politicians who are vying for positions in the public offices .
Many of them are in support of local government autonomy and are promising the masses that they will support the bill for local government autonomy. Note that the Governors rejected the bill in the ongoing constitution amendment.
GGM wishes to make the following clarifications;
i.That the creation of 774 local governments in Nigeria is for administrative convenience of the Military with command and control structures.
ii. That local government system as created by the Military is done for the purpose of sharing and consuming ” manna’ from the central government – Abuja with no incentive for productive.
iii. That the creation of local government areas in Nigeria was skewed in favour of northern Nigeria where a State like Kano has 44 local Governments while Lagos is around 24.
GGM noted that the recognition of local government as the third tier of Government in Nigeria was not ideal.It is wrong for Local Government to derive her power and functions directly from the federal Constitution. Nigeria is practicing federal system of Government,therefore ,local governments are creations of the State and should not enjoy power in the same measure that constitution grants to the federating units- States. In Federal System of Government,there are two levels of Government Viz Federal and State. It is the State or Region Constitution that should determine the functions of Local Government and such functions must meet the expectations of the local people.
It has become necessary to make this clarification in the face of the present confusion in the public space.
Ndubuisi Anaenugwu, Ambassador, Good Governance Ministry
Prof Soludo has given approval to seven real estate companies in Anambra for housing development but I am yet to see Government public policy on housing . What I have seen over the years is where Government creates opportunities for few privileged, opportunistic and powerful individuals who will continue in their exploitative and primitive accumulation of wealth businesses. I rarely see social housing scheme that will meet the housing needs of civil servants ,the poor and other less privileged classes . There should be a deliberate plan to take care of the rich and poor. I am yet to see such policy .
Also ,I have not seen Government developing a reliable bio-data on housing to ascertain the ownership structures and the gaps . I know that the past Governments have failed on building the needed institutions but we believe that Soludo will develop the needed template for development to take off . We are watching.
In 2019 when I first met Prof. Soludo, I was opportune to hear firsthand some of his concepts to governance. In one of our meetings with him at his country home in Isuofia, Prof. expressed his desire for a LIVEABLE and Prosperous Homeland with LIVEABILITY being one of the key concerns.
He explained how Ndi Anambra and Igbos at large are an itinerant people who are scattered across the globe outside the homeland. He went further to express his desire to make Anambra the epicenter of Igbo excellence where Ndi Igbo the world over will find a city where they can relocate to and settle in. A city where they can find all the basic amenities obtainable anywhere they stayed around the world.
To show you how important it was to Gov. Soludo, the phrase “A Liveable and Prosperous City” made it to his manifesto title when he eventually entered the race for the Governor of Anambra State.
His manifesto was tagged “THE PEOPLES MANIFESTO – the roadmap for the actualization of a Liveable and Prosperous Smart Mega City.”
To actualize this, Soludo proposed a massive boost in the real estate sector; the establishment of housing estate projects done in a Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement. These estates will be constructed to world-class standards such that anybody relocating from any part of the world, will find a living standard equatable to that of where they are leaving.
To Gov. Soludo, liveability is fundamental to what he seeks to achieve in his time as Governor. This is why yesterday heralded one of the major milestones of this Administration in achieving the desired goal.
Yesterday, the Ministry of Lands and the Anambra State Investment Promotion and Protection Agency (ANSIPPA) officially handed over assigned sites to seven (7) real estate development firms.
These firms are saddled with the responsibility of creating unique residential and commercial properties within the Awka Capital Territory.
The selected real estate firms are:
CNN Urban Developers Limited, Rainbow Heritage Projects Service Limited, MIO Construction Company Nigeria Limited, Southern Matrix Project Limited, Treasure Garden Investment Limited, Periwinkle Residences Limited, and Romax Properties Limited.
For me, observing this major milestone in the actualization of a project I knew when it was at the ideation stage years ago, brings me so much joy.
Indeed Governor Soludo is working according to plan, with laser-cut precision and purpose. And like we’ve always said,
The National Council of State has backed the Federal Government’s new monetary policy but tasked the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to take urgent steps to arrest the scarcity of cash across the nation.
CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele was advised to make new naira notes available or re-circulate old naira notes to ease the suffering of Nigerians.
Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami accompanied by Governors Babajide Sanwo-Olu(Lagos) and Darius Ishaku (Taraba) briefed reporters with presidential spokesman Femi Adesina on outcomes of the meeting.
Disclosing the final resolutions of the meeting, Malami said the two major issues deliberated were the level of preparedness for the general elections, for which he ssid the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, and the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Alkali Baba assured of adequate readiness.
He said the briefing on the new monetary policy, including the re-designing of some categories of the naira, elicited reactions and opinions, adding that the conclusion was that the CBN should do more to ensure there is circulation of adequate cash in the system to alleviate the harsh realities trailing the policy.
“So by way of conclusion, the two major resolutions that were driven, arriving from the deliberations of the Council, are one that we are on course as far as election is concerned and we are happy with the level of preparation by INEC and the institutions.
“Two, relating to the naira re-designed policy, the policy stands, but then the Council agreed that there is need for aggressive action on the part of the Central Bank, as it relates to the implementation of the policy by way of ensuring adequate provision being made with regard to the supply of the naira in the system,” he said.
