The Figures That Convince Me President Jonathan Is The Man For 2015 By Adeyemi Johnson

Recently, some APC stalwarts principally the party's chairman claimed that Nigeria has deteriorated under the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan and that APC offers a better solution, but is that true ? Rather than make subjective claims, it is better to examine the facts by global verifiable standards.

The most acceptable global composite standard for judging progress or development is the HDI Index. Many accept that Nigeria has not moved as fast as it should in this index. It measures three basic dimensions of human development, such as long and healthy life, knowledge and a descent standard of living.

The highest development is measured as 1, and anything below from 0.9 to 0.01 are a continuum from very high to very low respectively. But if we examine the facts from this measurement, in 2013 the Nigerian measurement on this index is 0.504. ln 2010 when Jonathan assumed office the Nigerian measure was 0.492, but in 1985 when Buhari left office Nigeria was second from last at the bottom of the table with our rating at 0.421. So, although Nigeria has not reached the highest ratings such as 0.810 to 0.870, under the Jonathan administration, it has moved up the Index since the time of Buhari.

But to show that this is a factual measure, If we examine some of the key indicators which make up this index such as life expectancy, which measures how long a person will live if all the prevailing conditions at his/her birth remains so throughout the person's life, we also see that, in 2012 the life expectancy of a Nigerian was 52.7, in 2010 it was 51 when the Jonathan administration assumed office.

There are some who will say that this is an effort to polish the image of the administration, but these measures are not conducted by Nigeria but by independent organs allied with the United Nations to measure the progress of mankind, and they often speak frankly to developing nations to let us know that where we are presently is far from the ideal and we should keep aspiring to that ideal.

But what is the APC offering? Looking back at the life expectancy of Nigerians in 1985 when Buhari left office, it was 47.18years and by 1999 when the civilians took over from the military that claims to have come to correct the ills of democracy, the life expectancy of Nigerians had actually fallen to 46.71years.

Moreover, it must also be pointed out that, although the national average in terms of HDI measurement is used as the standard for a country, it does not reflects the lived reality of everyone or the reality everywhere in a country. This is especially true for some of the indicators used to measure the HDI such as the standard of living which usually takes account of things like poverty rate and distribution of poverty. If we take the national distribution of poverty, low life expectancy and low literacy rates in Nigeria, it is discovered that the worst indicator measurements can be found in states that were formally ANPP.

The leadership value of ANPP can be directly associated with the leading presidential candidate that APC is offering as an alternative to the Jonathan administration. And the APC is saying publicly that the development that Nigeria is boasting about does not reflect on the people, but in actual fact, it is states under the leadership of the legacy members of APC which is pulling down the national average.

The data from states under Buhari's former legacy parties, are pulling down the national average. If we take away the data from these states, we might fare a lot better, what this means therefore is that what has worked better in other states should be emulated by these states, not the other way round.
So ,the question is: What is APC offering Nigerians? Is it progress or regression? Because apart from these quantitative facts, the APC is also offering qualitative expectations. They tell us that Buhari is an upright leader without administrative blemish. But many have pointed to the public records not political statements to verify this claim.

They point to human rights abuses. For example, Tai Solarin spent 17months in jail arrested with an illegal warrant of arrest which had only a photocopy of the signature of the Chief of Staff Supreme Headquarters. A Nigerian journalist, Vera Ifudu published that she was informed by the late Chief Olusola Saraki who was then in the Nigerian senate when the matter was probed that, the 2.8Billion United States Dollars which was missing at the NNPC under the Obasanjo regime while Buhari was Minister for Petroleum was traced to Buhari's private account' at the Midlands Bank in the United Kingdom. She was forced to resign because of this story without evidence to refute her story. While late Fela Ransom-Kuti was arrested for possession of Foreign exchange by the Buhari regime, money that was meant for the upkeep of his band on a foreign tour.

He was forced to spend 18months in jail, by a judge who was forced to imprison him by the Buhari regime, whereas on the same matter of illegal foreign exchange, when the Buhari regime was kicked out, his head of security, Lawal Rafindadi was found to have operated several personal foreign accounts, and until he died he was still fighting to unfreeze the accounts seized from him.

Also, Buhari and his deputy, Tunde Idiagbon made a law for Nigerians, that no one, under 18years should go on pilgrimage to the holy land Mecca but Idiagbon himself was found returning from Hajj with his 14year old son, when they were dethroned. Buhari was aware that Idiagbon went on hajj with his under-aged son. So they made one law for themselves and another for Nigerians.

Similarly, while Buhari was Chairman of PTF, an audit of the Agency found that over 25 billion Naira was missing though the agency, his relative Ahmad Salihijo, whom he appointed as the sole consultant in charge of all the transactions of the agency, died when the audit committee was constituted, some say he committed suicide to hide the facts, we will never know. But the audit report found many cases of clear over-invoicing and importation of expired products by the agency.

Therefore, looking at the quantitative progress of HDI indicators since 1985 and qualitative evidence the farce of Buhari's mythical uprightness, it is hard to understand, where the confidence of the APC lies that it is offering Nigeria a better choice for 2015

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The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author, Adeyemi Johnson
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Opinion: Why I Endorse The 'Clueless' President For A 2nd Term By Uzochukwu Okafor

I have been thinking seriously on why President Jonathan is constantly being derided and abused by a few but vociferous individuals. The most recent being that emanating from President Obasanjo's latest book. But what now propelled me into contributing to this debate is the article written by Mr. Nnimmo Bassey, who I have very high regard for since our student days at the University of Nigeria, Enugu campus.

In that article captioned " A Clueless president," he stated how an African friend he had not seen in years asked him about "his clueless President." This demonstrates the need for us to remain decorous even in instances of very sharp disagreements. Quite often, Nigerians complain of disrespectful treatments at the airports by immigration and custom officials.

There is a saying in Igbo land to the effect that when you describe your cooking pot as useless, people will treat it as rubbish. We Nigerians have often not been mindful of the damage we do to our country and ourselves when we denigrate our institutions and our leaders in a careless and reckless manner. It is even more so when such recklessness comes from a former president who should be more thoughtful and circumspect in his utterances and writings.

As we approach the 2015 presidential elections, the denigration of the office of the president is being escalated. The launch of the book, My Watch, by former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo (OBJ) was seen in this light by many commentators. The opposition party, the APC is also determined to do maximum damage to President Jonathan and the office of the President. The utterances from its leadership need a lot of moderation and scrubbing. They have also at various times described Mr. President as clueless and one who runs an auto pilot government. The radical changes promised by President Jonathan during his campaign were captured in the Transformation Agenda document.

Programmes identified in this document will be used to evaluate the government of president Jonathan to see if his government can be described as clueless and running on auto pilot. An important barometer of a viable democracy is the sanctity of the voter's wish.

When late President Yaradua took office, he acknowledged that his election was largely flawed and vowed to clean up the electoral process. President Jonathan who succeeded him have not disappointed in this regard. It is to his credit that subsequent elections have been largely declared as free and fair by international observers. Another important index and benefit of democracy is the freedom of expression, freedom of association and statutorily guaranteed access to information.

Under President Jonathan, freedom of speech has remained unencumbered in spite of some unwarranted abuses his government has suffered. President Jonathan remains to date the most demonised, abused and derided President Nigeria has ever had. But it is to his credit that he has never used the security apparatus at his disposal to persecute any one. One can also acknowledge that he signed the Freedom of Information (FOI) Bill into law, a bill that the previous governments avoided for years.

Under President Jonathan, the power sector has witnessed the privatisation of the generation and distribution companies. If international and local assessments of this process are anything to go by, the bidding process has been mostly transparent. With this process concluded, one can anticipate an irreversible process in achieving stable power supply in no distant future, the same way the telecommunication sector benefited from privatization.

The rehabilitation of the railway system deserves special mention. This important means of transportation has been unfortunately ignored by previous governments. The progress being made in this sector in reopening the railway links to the major cities in Nigeria is commendable. This is being complemented with the dredging of the lower River Niger. We also take particular note of the ongoing construction of the new bridge over the River Benue and the commencement of work on the Second Niger Bridge.

The aviation sector is another area that has witnessed significant transformation. The modernisations of the existing airports and construction of new airport terminals have improved the standing of Nigerian airports within the international aviation community. It is therefore not surprising that Nigeria has attained and retained the FAA Category One status. The launching of the National industrial Revolution Plan (NIRP), and the National Enterprise Development Programme has led to the resuscitation of Nigeria automobile industry.

Nigeria has moved from a net importer of cement to a net exporter of cement by increasing installed capacity from 16.5 million metric tons per annum in 2011 to 39.5 million metric tons per annum in 2014. The transformation agenda of Mr. President, if implemented faithfully, will no doubt significantly improve Nigeria economy. But we must be mindful of the fact that its impact and success rests on tackling the monster of corruption. One, therefore, cannot fairly evaluate this administration without assessing its approach to addressing the issue of corruption. Although Nigeria has improved slightly with respect to the perception index of Transparency International, perception of corruption in Nigeria is still high.

While there is often a mismatch between perception and reality, one cannot ignore perception. The truth, is that Mr. President needs to demonstrate that his government abhors corruption. While I agree with Mr. President that dealing with corruption is not about parading people on the television but devising creative and systematic means of addressing it, there is still need to combine the long term measure of Mr. President with some short term prescriptions.

One short term measure could be initiating an executive bill to set up Tribunals dedicated to trying cases of corruption. These tribunals should be presided over by credible retired judges. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has often complained about their frustration with the process at the existing courts. The conviction of Governor Ibori at the UK Court vis a vis the merry go round experienced in the same case in Nigeria is a case in point.

Having stated the issues above, it will be germane to acknowledge what this administration has already done to tackle corruption at its roots. These include the restructuring of the pension payment system, the restructuring of the integrated salary payment system, and the deregulation in the oil and gas sector to check corrupt practices in the downstream sector.

The disappearance of perennial queues at our filling stations is one testimony to the success of the creative approach to stemming endemic corruption in the oil sector. Signing of the Anti-Money Laundering Act into law, introduction of an electronic-wallet scheme, that has reduced significantly decades of corruption in the fertiliser and seed sectors are also very creative.

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The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author, Uzochukwu Okafor
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Top 10 Trending Hashtags In Nigeria For Jan 14, 2015

As the February 14, 2015 presidential elections draws closer by the day, it appears the incumbent president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is gradually making waves on TWITTER - one of the most popular social media platform in the world.

Among the hashtags created in Nigeria, president Jonathan appears to be heading back to Aso-Rock going by this hashtag: #Gej_WillWin. This is has been trending now for the past two days and it remains to be seen how strong it can go.

Here are the hashtags that have made the list so far:
#EveryVillainNeeds [image] Promoted
#GEJ_WillWin
Zahra
#Presh_Davido
#GEJistheChange
#OGAARA_byBrain
#Courteville10thAnniversary
Nigeria
Ronaldo
Baga
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UNIBEN HOSTEL Accommodation Update: Unity Bank To Process Payments

BANK CHARGES: all students are advised to pay their bank charges into the banks as specified below.

1) Hostel access and maintenance charges: unity bank Ugbowo campus. All students: 1000

2) SUG dues: access bank ugbowo campus.
A) old students; 300
B) new students ; 500

3)Clearance charges: Guaranty Trust bank, Ugbowo campus.

4)School fees: payment online.

5)Students record file(new students): First Bank Plc, Ugbowo Campus

NOTE:
receipts for hostel access and SUG dues are to be presented to the deans office, students affairs division before registration for hostel request.

Old students could commence their request for hostel accommodation with effect from 15th Jan, 2015, provided that:
A)their sessional result have been approved by
senate and
B)they have paid their school charges

Please also note that hostel allocation are strictly on a first come-first serve basis as the
bed spaces available are limited.

Signed: Prof Victor Edosa Omozuwa
Dean of students.
14/01/2015
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Exclusive: Delta Central APC Councillors Hold Two-Days Meeting

Newsbeatportal can authoritatively report that the All Progressives Congress (APC) Councillors from Delta Central Senatorial District are holding a two-days meeting.

The meeting is ongoing at the secretariat of the party in Ughelli South Local Government Area, Ughelli, Delta State.

The priority of the meeting is to make proper preparations and strategize towards the forth-coming general elections in the state and Nigeria at large.

The governorship candidate of the party, Olorogun Otega Emerhor, is expected to meet with the councillors tomorrow, the 15th of January, 2015.

Delta Central Senatorial district consists of eight Local Governments; namely, Uvwie Local Government, Ethiope East Local Government, Ethiope West Local Government, Okpe Local Government, Ughelli North Local Government, Ughelli South Local Government, Sapele Local Government, and Udu Local Government.


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Satisfied With Electricity In Nigeria? Engage PDP Now On Twitter

The Largest Political party in Nigeria and Africa, The Peoples Democratic Party, is currently engaging Nigerians on the state of the power sector in Nigeria.

Earlier today, the party, through his social media handle on twitter, wrote:

"@PdpNigeria will be answering questions on the Power Sector today. Tweet using the hashtag #AskPDP"

Wherever you may be, as long as you have access to twitter, kindly engage the party today. You are at liberty to ask your questions as you deem them fit.

You can follow the party on twitter by clicking http://twitter.com/pdpnigeria

What are you waiting for? Tweet your questions now using the hashtag: #AskPDP
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ECTL Fourth Quarter Investors Update Now Available Online

Dear Shareholders,

The Ellist Communication Technology Ltd fourth quarter business activities came to an end today [January 14, 2015].

The main drive of the ECTL is traffic; more traffic generates more revenue. Our technology is built so rigorously to monetize every web traffic we get. The digital advertising landscape is advancing everyday and more large portals are building their own in-house advertising program to monetize their huge web traffic.

Hence we lost some of the largest web traffic sources such as Naij.com, National Mirror etc. This also led to the loss of some of our major advertisers like mobofree. Because of this trend, we decided to build our own traffic sources to consume our adverts, hence we started our flagship project http://talkafrica.co

Within 3months+ of its launched we have driven the traffic to over 20,000 daily unique but this is still far from the projected minimum daily traffic of 200,000 Africans needed to attract large institutional advertisers. We can achieve this in the next quarter as we have been able to master the pattern and, with better funding and completion of the mobile apps for the platform, traffic will be greatly improved.

Dividends
===============

There will be no dividend for the fourth quarter as our revenue has greatly been affected by low traffic buildup. We hope to steer the business to success this coming quarter.

Outlook for the Fifth Quarter
=================================

(i) The ECTL is currently building a datafeed technology to enable all shareholders view the companies daily revenue real time. Our policy has always been hinged on openness and transparency. The core businesses of the ECTL is done online and all business data and recorded online, we intend streaming this data to all shareholders daily.

(ii) With lowering revenue, we are inviting shareholders, who can volunteer in supervising some of our web projects as telecommuting team members, to join the team. It is important to be part of the growth of the ECTL.

Our Challenges At the Moment
================================

The ECTL has been able to massively invest in building some of the very important technology required in monetizing web traffic. We have a link advertising technology, Social media monetization technology, banner and contextual ads monetization technology and finally we have built a robust portal technology to drive traffic and make these technologies developed profitable.

At this stage, we need aggressive campaigns and better advertising budgets to reach out to millions of internet users in Africa. With large traffic comes better revenue.

Our challenge at the moment is getting the right funding to promote these project, we have currently placed 5% of the companies share to raise the required funding needed to massively grow our traffic source this coming quarter.

Without aggressive campaign, it may take longer to get to the required traffic levels where revenue will be meaningful.

Regards!!!

ECTL Team

Full Source/Comments Available here: http://talkafrica.co/ng/p/22339/20788-updates
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UNIBEN Bans Stanbic Bank Located Inside Ugbowo Campus

The University of Benin, Benin City, UNIBEN, has given an order to STANBIC IBTC Bank to stop collecting payments from students who are applying for hostel accommodation.

STANBIC IBTC Bank has a branch inside the University Campus at Ugbowo, Main Gate, Benin City.

As a result of this new development, all new students have been advised to put an hold to all Hostel Applications until the university authorities make provision for another alternative.

However, for those students who were quick to make payments to the aforementioned bank, the university will sort out whatever issues that may arise.


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Joke: Five Parachutes, Four First Class Citizens, One Jet Plane; Who died?

A plane was about to crash and there were only four parachutes in the plane. Meanwhile there were five people on board the plane.

The first person was Cristiano Ronaldo and he said: I am the best footballer, I can't die now" so he took 1 parachute and left.

The second person, who was Aliko Dangote said "i'm the richest man in Africa and i'm too young to die" so he took a parachute and left.

The third was President Jonathan and he said: "I am the smartest president in the world so i cannot die right now, my people still need me;" so he took 1 and left.

Then It was left with Pope Francis and a little
school girl. The Pope said to the little girl: "take the last one, I am ready to sacrifice my life for yours". Astonishingly, the little girl replied: 'no need for that, there are two parachutes left.

The pope asked her: how come? The little girl
replied: 'the Nigerian president took my school bag.

What do you think will happen to President Jonathan according to this joke?

Ologbosere Martins Tolulope wrote in via Facebook.


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The Beef Continues: Reno Omokiri's 14 Questions for General Buhari and the APC.

I have questions for Gen Buhari and his party and I hope rather than insults we will get answers to these factual questions.

1. Has Buhari apologised to Ben Ogedengbe's family for killing him for a crime that did not carry death penalty when he committed it.

2. If Buhari really believes that power is from God as he says, then why did he take it by
force in 1983?

3. Has Buhari apologized to the people of Lagos for cancelling Jakande's Metroline & forfeiting the $50 million Lagos paid for it?

4. Why did Buhari regime use violence to stop the September 1985 National Conference of
the National Association of Nigerian Students?

5. Has Buhari apologized for heading the ONLY
military administration that did not have a transition plan to hold elections?

6. Has Buhari apologized for jailing Tai Solarin & denying him his asthma drugs simply because he campaigned against military rule

7. Has Buhari apologized for jailing Nduka Irabor and Tunde Thompson for writing a truthful report which embarrassed his government?

8. Has Buhari apologized for raiding Papa Awolowo's house and seizing his passport so he couldn't travel out of the country?

9. Has Buhari apologized for throwing VP Alex
Ekwueme in jail even though it was proven that
Ekwueme DID NOT steal?

10. What reason did Buhari have for jailing Ojukwu in 1984? Ojukwu was not in Shagari's government and he did not steal!

11. Can Buhari explain to young Nigerians why he banned the Nigerian Medical Association? Does he hate doctors?

12. What reason did Buhari have for jailing the
activist Beko Ransome Kuti who campaigned for his brother, Fela's release?

13. They say Buhari is now a democrat. Really? Then why did he treat the Oputa Panel with such disdain and refused to appear?

14. Why did Buhari jail Fela Kuti in 1984? What was Fela's crime? Singing against military
government?

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Reno Omokiri is the SA on Social Media to the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.
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