Anambra Housing Commissioner Asks Construction Professionals To Key Into Soludo’s Smart Megacity Philosophy
The Anambra State Commissioner of Housing, Barrister Paulinus Onyeka says experts in the construction sector would play important role in the smart megacity vision of Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s administration.
Barrister Onyeka stated this when he played host to professionals in the construction industry, including architects, builders, engineers, estate surveyors, and quantity surveyors.
Addressing the visitors, the commissioner asked them to bring their experience and expertise to the table and cooperate with the new administration’s vision of making Anambra State a smart mega city and livable homeland for all.
He urged them to always stick to the ethics of their jobs, and to stare away from activities that give bad impression on their professions, including use of substandard materials and employment of methods that do not tally with modern day building practice.
The commissioner also stated that a codification system will be deployed to control illicit activities of property developers and quacks, adding that a new system is coming up to ensure that every new house constructed in Anambra State whether public or private is captured in the Ministry’s data bank for effective building control monitoring.
This, he said, will be supported by development control already handled by the Anambra State Physical Planning Authority [ANSPPA], noting that every site under construction must have a visible site signage containing the names and phone numbers, registration status and contact addresses of all the construction professionals engaged in them, as a way of tracking them and ensuring accountability.
In their separate remarks, some of the professionals, Engineers Akaolisa Ezeagu, Alex Chukwunwike and Odinaka Okonkwo, while commending the commissioner for bringing them together, said that the menace of quackery in the building profession must be tackled head-on and urged for more collaboration with regulatory agencies in the area of building material testing and control, with efficient material testing laboratories setup in various markets.
Working in line with his vision of taking back Anambra for economic development vis-à-vis powering the economy, improving infrastructure, advancing agro business and revitalizing internal security architecture, so as to achieve the vision of a liveable, prosperous and secured homeland, Anambra State Governor; Chukwuma Soludo CFR will host a security and opportunities summit.
The event which will take place between today, Wednesday, May 11, 2022 at Villa Dome Event Centre, Ikoyi, Lagos, and tomorrow, Thursday, May 12, 2022 at Treasure Suites, C.B.D, Abuja, will attract diplomatic communities, donor agencies and investors, captains of industry, traders and market leaders, and security experts.
Governor Soludo is seeking all-inclusive partnership in his administration, and the summit is targeted at mobilizing investors and project developers thereby connecting them to the limitless opportunities in Anambra with a goal towards accelerating the state into a megacity where people can live happily, work happily, learn happily, invest happily and enjoy happily.
President Muhammadu Buhari has directed that all members of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) running for elective offices to submit their letters of resignation on or before Monday the 16th of May, 2022.
The Minister of information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, disclosed this on Wednesday after the Federal Executive Council meeting.
Those affected are Ministers of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation Abubakar Malami, Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi; Niger Delta, Godswill Akpabio; Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige; Science, Technology and Innovation, Ogbonnaya Onu; Minister of State for Education, Emeka Nwajiuba, who have all joined the presidential race on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Others are the Minister of State Mines and Steel, Uche Ogar, who is running for the governorship position in Abia State, and the Minister of Women Affairs, Pauline Tallen, who declared her ambition to contest for the senatorial seat in Plateau State.
Mr. Mohammed stressed that this mandate excludes the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo because he is an elected member of the cabinet.
He affirmed that any amendment or additions to this directive will be disseminated accordingly.
The Minister added that if the need arises, the directive might involve political appointees.
In November 2017, it emerged that the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, had significant interests in an off-shore company registered in Bermuda, which held an account with the UBS in London. The UBS is a multinational investment bank and financial services company with its headquarters in Basel and Zurich in Switzerland.
Disclosures released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in the Paradise Papers revealed that Emefiele owned 49% of Oviation Asset Management since 2009 and was a director in the company since January 2013.
According to The Guardian newspaper in London, “Oviation was part of a structure that imported two jets via the Isle of Man. The latest purchase, a $50m Gulfstream G550, arrived in November 2015. It replaced a $33m Gulfstream G450, imported in 2013.”
Fifteen months before the import of the second Gulfstream, in June 2014, Emefiele became the Governor of the CBN. In this capacity, he also leads The Mint, which prints Nigeria’s currency.
Section 9 of the CBN Act of 2007 requires of both the Governor of the Central Bank and his deputies that they “shall devote the whole of their time to the service of the Bank and, while holding office, shall not engage in any full or part-time employment or vocation, whether remunerated or not, except such charitable causes as may be determined by the Board and which do not conflict with or conflict with their full-time duties.”
This prohibition places three constraints on the CBN Governor: one substantive, another procedural, and a third, ethical. Substantively, it bars him from moonlighting in any other job or vocation, whether or not remunerated. Procedurally, he needs the approval of the Board of the CBN before taking on any role outside the bank. Implied in this is an obligation of full and honest disclosure on the part of the CBN Governor. As an (additional) ethical standard, the Act precludes the CBN Governor from putting himself in a position that conflicts with his full-time duties.
As the head of a “public corporation” (which the CBN is), Emefiele, as the CBN Governor, is also subject to the Code of Conduct for senior public officers contained in the 5th Schedule to the Nigerian constitution, which imposes on him standards of conduct with reference to asset disclosures, acceptance of gifts and donations, and holding of overseas interests.
For Emefiele, it seems these standards were ornaments of convenience. Three years into his office as the CBN Governor, his interests in Oviation were still intact. Contacted by The Guardian for an explanation in November 2017, Emefiele claimed that he “gave instructions for his shares to be handed back” to his former employers, a Nigerian bank, in 2014. For a central banker, this claim shows either a tendency for the cavalier or habit of casuistry. The former puts his professionalism in question and the latter is a question of character.
On or about May 4, 2022, Emefiele was a guest of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), in the Presidency. The following day, some characters claiming to be armed Niger Delta militants endorsed the CBN Governor for the presidential ticket of the ruling All Progressives Congress, promising to lay down their arms if the party were to hand the ticket to him. It is too soon to say whether or not these two developments which appear unrelated have anything to do with what happened next.
Putting months of speculation and hide-and-seek to rest, it emerged on May 6, 2022 that one Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria and two other shadowy organisations had purchased for Emefiele forms to run for the presidency on the ticket of the APC. His political organisation goes by the brand “#Meffy2023”. The following day, May 7, Emefiele claimed that he was awaiting “God’s Divine intervention” which he hoped to receive “in the next few days”.
Emefiele has been nothing if not consistent in his convenient attitude to rules. As the CBN Governor, he has maintained a ruinous regime of multiple exchange rates, sustaining a deliberate scheme of profitable arbitrage which is conducive to cronyism at his discretion and insider abuse. The result is this his version of “Farmers Earnestly Yearn for Emefiele”.
He has got the CBN involved in schemes and scams that almost assuredly violate Section 34 of the CBN Act; from taking over the management of the National Theatre (despite pending litigation) to making himself a willing instrument for the persecution of #EndSARS protesters. Premium Times in a February 21, 2021 editorial fears that his tenure at the CBN will be remembered for having wilfully “shredded” the guardrails in the CBN Act.
In a country where consequences follow malfeasance, Emefiele will already be in prison. In Nigeria, he longs for the presidency.
The question whether Emefiele can run for the presidential ticket of a political party while also continuing to serve as the CBN Governor is both moral and legal. Premium Times addressed the former, pointing out that “the operational and administrative autonomy granted the central bank by its enabling statute was precisely to protect the governor from political influence.”
The governor of Ondo State, himself a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and former president of the Nigerian Bar Association, Rotimi Akeredolu, puts it even more pointedly in a release issued on the same day that Emefiele collected the form to actualise his aspiration: “It is difficult to imagine that a person who occupies the exalted and sensitive office of the Governor of the CBN will be this brazen in actualising his ambition.”
A partisan politician grubbing for votes while hanging on as the CBN Governor messes with more than the statutory independence of the Bank. It is inconceivable that he can retain independence while seeking the presidency. On the same May 6, on which he collected his presidential forms, “news of Emefiele’s presidential bid sent the Naira close to a record low”, confirming that his is no ordinary ambition.
But this is, even more, a legal issue. To be sure, Emefiele, as an adult citizen of Nigeria, is entitled to run for any office he desires. Two of his predecessors have preceded him into elective politics. Clement Isong, the second Governor of the CBN from 1967 to 1975, became the first elected governor of old Cross-River State in October 1979. Chukwuma Soludo, who was the CBN Governor from 2004 to 2009, is currently serving as the governor of Anambra State, having been elected on November 6, 2021. Both Dr. Isong and Professor Soludo ran for office after the expiration of their terms.
Section 9 of the CBN Act makes it quite clear that the CBN Governor just cannot choose to run for elective office while still holding on to office. In any case, he has to first secure the approval of the CBN Board, which is not the case here. He could, of course, choose to resign in order to pursue his ambition. For this, Section 11(3) of the CBN Act requires him to give “at least three months’ notice in writing to the President of his intention to do so.”
So, Section 9 of the CBN Act precludes Emefiele from political activities and Section 11(3) requires him to give three months’ notice of resignation. As a matter of law, he should have resigned at least three months before the party presidential primary in which he is to be a contestant. The possibility that such a notice from the CBN Governor can be concealed for this long in a political season would require terminal skills in political self-immolation.
But, as with his holding in an offshore company despite being prohibited from doing so, Emefiele would wish this away as yet another inconsequential encounter with an inconvenient guardrail. The Presidency, however, is ultimately about guardrails. As Lincoln is reported to have said and many more since then have shown, it is a test of character.
In pursuit of his audacious project, Emefiele has not encountered any guardrails which he has not been willing to destroy. For those who wish to turn over to him the keys to the presidency at this time and in this manner, Governor Akeredolu’s words bear repeating: This is a joke taken too far.
In the end, it would appear that Emefiele is relaxed about having the fate of his ambition decided by a college of Nigerian judges. He carries on with the cockiness of a man who has assured himself that, as the boss of The Mint, he can issue enough notes to buy any number of judges on his march to whatever he fancies. If he ultimately suffers a bloody nose, it’ll be just desserts for a man who clearly believes everything can be bought and sold.
*Prof Odinkalu, lawyer and teacher, can be reached at _chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu_*
Northern groups pick APC Presidential Form for Goodluck Jonathan.
We had reported last month how two prominent governors of the Northern region have been fine-tuning plans to draft Jonathan into the presidential race.
Last month, some group of protesters stormed the Abuja office of Jonathan, urging the Niger Delta politician to declare his interest.
Although, Jonathan who came out to address the protesters however told them he was still “consulting and they should “watch out”.
According to Jonathan, he will make his intention known at the appropriate time.
However, an attempt by our reporters to confirm whether Jonathan was aware of the development proved abortive as several calls placed to his media Aids were neither answered nor returned at the time of filing this report
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has extended its strike by 12 weeks.
The Union extended the strike following the Federal Government failure to meet its demand after embarking on a 3 months warning strike.
Confirming the extension of the strike, the National President of ASUU, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke said the academic body took the decision at an emergency National Executive Council (NEC) held at ASUU Secretariat in Abuja.
The meeting which stated in Sunday and ended during the early hours of Monday, had in attendance principal officers and branch chairmen of the union.
Recall that ASUU had embarked on a one-month strike on February 14 over the failure of the Nigerian Government to honour the various agreements reached with them and later extended the strike by 2 months on the 14th of March.
According to the union, some of its demand are, the release of revitalisation funds for universities, renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ASUU agreement, release of earned allowances for university lecturers, and deployment of the UTAS payment platform for the payment of salaries and allowances of university lecturers.
Development is freedom, says Amartya Sen. Development is roads and bridges, says Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State.
I visited Abakiliki, the Ebonyi State Capital last two years. I saw significant physical development. I saw the foundations of a big stadium being constructed by the state government. I asked if Ebonyi has any club featuring in the Nigerian Professional League. I was told Ebonyi has none. That’s typical Dave Umahi: big projects without contexts and content. The biggest diagnostic center without insulins, drugs and medical experts.
Dave has done a lot in terms of basic physical infrastructure. The skyline of much of urban Abakiliki looks bright. Like Governor Rochas Okorocha, he has a knack for bricks and mortars, being a respected civil engineer who ran a modestly successful engineering firm before becoming a Governor. But unlike Rochas Okorocha, everything Dave Umahi built is sensible and strong, even if bogus and perhaps not needful. His projects can stand the test of time. Rochas’ expire with the exuberance that inspires them.
But if you go past the urban eldorado that Umahi built, what you see in the rest of Ebonyi are poverty and disempowerment. Dave has not developed Ebonyi. He has built up a part of it. Unlike Sam Egwu who made tremendous investment in education, Dave Umahi has not done much to improve the human capital of Ebonyi. A look at the human development indexes with the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics tells the story of misconceived development. Ebonyi is fighting hard with the poorest northern states in terms of these vital statistics.
The fault for Ebonyi’s poor stats on human development is partly Umahi’s. His concept of development is the strong man who terrorizes everyone and foist his wisdom on everything. Unfortunately, the failure of development in Nigeria has created the wrong paradigm of the strong, authoritarian and brutish leader rather than the democratic, compassionate leader. Umahi has brutalized every political leader in Ebonyi who has not bowed to him. It is painful to travel through Ebony and run into palpable fear and submissiveness. Ebonyi people are not experiencing democratic citizenship. They are in the prison built with hubris and brute ambition.
Umahi should not succeed Buhari. His leadership in Ebonyi shows he will not be able to fix the development challenges of Nigeria. He will see them as matter of more bridges and roads( even if two bridges run through his massive compound and none for the communities that need them); he will not understand why the leader should bother about human rights; and will compound the problem of poverty as Buhari has done.
Dave Umahi claims to adore Buhari. May be he is honest in this claim. But whereas his hero is authoritarian but largely absentminded, Dave will be authoritarian and ever present.
That is really frightening. Therefore, don’t let Dave be on the 2023 Presidential ballot.
The Anambra State Government embarks on recruitment of experience Teachers to fill the various vacant position.
Interested applicants are to follow the directive of this page and submit the online form. Read through( go to Anambra website)
The Anambra State Teachers Recruitment are for both Secondary and Primary schools. Possession of Educational qualification is an added advantage.
The appointment letter will be issued to qualify candidates that will pass both the physical and credentials screening test that will be conducted by the authority of Akwa
Anambra State Governor, Prof Chukwuma Soludo has commissioned some corporate social responsibility projects at Capital City Secondary School and Amaenyi Primary School Awka, the Anambra State capital.
The projects were executed by Chief Clem Nwogbo, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Awka Millennium City, Awka.
Among the projects, the governor commissioned, are a storey building, housing digital library, classrooms and Assembly Hall at Capital City Secondary School, Awka, while rehabilitated and grassed football field, perimeter fence, security and refurbished classroom block, drainage channel to combat erosion at Amaenyi Community Primary School, modern toilet facilities at both schools, including borehole and overhead water tanks, as well as re-equipped school’s physics, chemistry and biology laboratories to encourage science education among students in the state.
The governor in his speech, during the inauguration, at school premises, Amaenyi, Awka, on Friday, identified human capital development as a major player in building a greater future for Anambra State.
He harped on the need to empower students through quality education and commended Chief Nwogbo for his immense contributions to the development of the society which he described as a landmark.
Pointing out that the difference between the children of the poor and that of the rich is opportunity, Governor Soludo noted that the gesture by Chief Nwogbo has bridged the gap.
In his speech, Chief Nwogbo, who observed that the journey of school adoption began over twelve years ago noted that Governor Soludo was the first to initiate such with the adoption of Amoji Primary School Isuofia, Aguata Local Government Area.
He expressed satisfaction in making sustainable social investments adding that his efforts are in line with Governor Soludo’s vision of building Anambra State into a livable and prosperous smart megacity, driven by the philosophy of one Anambra, one people, one agenda.
The Commissioner for Education, Professor Ngozi Chum-Udeh, commended Chief Nwogbo for the projects, advising Ndi Anambra to invest more in education to equip the future leaders with right skills.
Governor Soludo at the event, unveiled the plaque and officially commissioned the projects to commemorate the adoption of Capital City Secondary School and Amaenyi Community Primary School Awka by Chief Nwogbo.
The event was witnessed by the Speaker Anambra State House of Assembly, Right Honourable Uchenna Okafor, Obi of Onitsha, Igwe Nnaemeka Achebe, the traditional ruler of Awka, Obi Gibson Nwosu, among others.
He came with huge expectations. Many thought he has the magic wand to make Anambra state a dream land. He was seen as the best of what ndi Anambra needed at the moment.
But so far, the man seems to be struggling. When he was sworn-in, he moved with a speed that we thought he had plans to tackle the challenges immediately.
When he went to Okpoko, we were thinking that he already had an urban renewal strategic development report of Okpoko and that by now, he would have turned the slum into a liveable neighborhood with all critical amenities provided. But up till now, Okpoko remains what it is, nothing is going on in Okpoko.
Prof Soludo again gave hope that he would dislodge the criminals that have taken over the forests in the state. These criminals creat fear, cause pains, maim, kill, rape and kidnap our people. When he declared to take them out, we all rejoiced. But presently, the criminals are having field days operating freely. Our people are fleeing their communities. The insecurity escalated and no one sleeps closing his eyes. On security he has scored zero.
On the wastes and refuse dumps that took over the state. The state Commissioner for Environment is actually working hard. But their efforts are not seen. Onitsha and Awka, the two pilot cities still witness heaps of refuses at major points. Their approach is not working.
We can also say same on the war against touting. The agberos in Onitsha are still operating against the governors directive.
All the four major agenda he set out to achieve the moment he was sworn in on March 17, are worsening on daily basis.
Okpoko, Unknown gunmen, Agberos and refuse disposal management are his 4 major immediate agenda. Presently, the man is struggling, nothing to show.
I don’t want to believe he is overrated. This is time to translate his beautiful grammar into action. Let the theories be seen on ground. All his beautiful speeches are still on paper. Nothing to commend so far.
