Spider Clues

TODAY, our ship of state seems to be careening from side-to-side under a tumultuous, overcast sky. My brief remarks this morning centre on transformational leadership in a democracy and why it matters for our future. It is my conviction that leadership makes all the difference. Leaders set the tone, exercise influence and mobilise people, ideas and technology for positive national transformation. They not only master the art of command; they call the shots and follow-up to ensure rigorous implementation of national policies. In the words of John Quincy Adams, one of the Founding Fathers of the American Republic: “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, and do more and become more, you are a leader”. Harvard Business School professor Warren Bennis, in his famous book, On Becoming a Leader, identifies self-knowledge to be key to the process of becoming a leader. Leaders, according to him, “…know who they are, what their strengths and weaknesses...

In case you have missed it, there is something interesting trending of late in the world of politics, governance and accountability. It is the sight of prominent former Heads of State and Prime Ministers helping police with their enquiries, and subsequently being escorted to serve various jail terms, having been convicted of grand larceny and other high crimes, in various courts of law, during their tenure in office. Where on earth is this happening, you might be wondering? Must be on another planet, it seems? Of course, not, it is happening right here on earth; on the other side of the Atlantic, in fact. Well, then, let us see what is really happening in those countries and continents where they are busy sending their former corrupt leaders to jail. They may have something to learn from us Africans, who tend to celebrate and hero-worship such people. We shower them with boulevards and monuments across our towns and cities, you know? So, who the hell has the audacity to send corrupt f...

Nigerian billionaires, international oil companies and other operators have been identified as owners of the 49 oil block  licences some of which expired since 2010. Our correspondent gathered that nine Oil Mining Leases (six of which are currently producing) and 40 Oil Prospecting Licences, many of which were awarded during the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo, had expired. OML 103, from which Conoil Producing Limited, owned by Chief Mike Adenuga,  expired in 2013, while the lease renewal process was said to be ongoing. The company’s OPLs 290 and 257 expired in 2013 and 2016 respectively. Also, OPL 204, owned by Africoil & Marketing Company Limited, expired in 2010, and OPLs 236 while 244 operated by Mr. Wale Tinubu’s Oando Plc and Nigeria Agip Exploration respectively expired in 2011. Similarly, OPL 320, operated by billionaire Prince Arthur Eze’s Oranto Petroleum Limited, expired in 2012. The Department of Petroleum Resources said the owners applied f...

An Argentine woman Brenda Barattini accused of cutting off her boyfriend’s penis with gardening scissors said she was provoked because he showed his friends their homemade sex tape, according to reports. The 26-year-old Barattini, allegedly committed the revenge attack in the Nueva Cordoba area of the Argentine city of Cordoba last November, which left her 40-year-old boyfriend with 90 percent of his penis chopped off, and in life-threatening condition. Barattini, who is serving imprisonment without bail ahead of her trial, said she suffered great psychological harm because of the leaked tape by her boyfriend Sergio Fernandez. “I cut his penis but not completely: I injured him. It wasn’t complete: I injured him,” she said, according to a translation of her jail interview. The man has been left depressed, one of his attorneys said, as he waits for future operations. According to Fox News, hospital employees were unable to reattach Fernandez penis. The incident rings similar to the c...

Akothee couldn't hold back her anger as she called out her mzungu baby daddy - According to her, her son's father was the reason why she was unlucky during her pregnancies - She even revealed the chap went behind her back to badmouth her with her employees Controversial singer Akothee expressed her fury when her son's father decided to attack her through her employees. According to the musician, the chap only known as Markus expressed she(Akothee) was spreading fake news about him. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens Akothee can't stand how her baby daddy keeps meddling in her affairs. Photo: Akothee/Instagram The dejected mzungu argued the musician took him to court thus suggesting she did not deserve a single penny from him. "He said Esther has to buy everything now because we are fighting in court," Akothee wrote. She stated her baby daddy constantly probed her employees about her relationship wit...

FORMER vice president, Atiku Abubakar has dismissed the threat made by the former president, Olusegun Obasanjo that he would never be president when he is alive, saying he is not God. Speaking in a BBC Hausa programme monitored in Kaduna on Saturday, Atiku maintained that he was never disturbed when he heard that Obasanjo made such statements. According to him, the former president is not God, saying, if it is the Will of God that I will be a president who can be challenged God’s Authority. The former number two man confirmed that he was denied Visa when he wanted to travel to the United States sometimes ago, saying, what they told me was my application for a visa was denied because it was passing through the administrative process. When he was asked how he intends to become president without visiting America, Atiku retorted that must someone travel to America if he is elected the president, saying, it is a constitutional issue or what? ‘I can be president without go...

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari is to meet President Donald Trump in Washington on Monday, the first African leader to be received by Trump’s White House administration. All eyes will be on Trump after he earlier called African nations “shithole” countries, a damaging remark he has since denied. President Buhari attends Lunch in honor of select African Heads of State hosted by President of United States Donald Trump at the sidelines of 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on 20th Sept 2017 Trump’s relationship with the continent suffered a further setback in March when former secretary of state Rex Tillerson was fired while in Nigeria on his first trip to the continent. As a result, the visit revealed little about Trump’s Africa policy. Buhari’s visit comes after Trump met German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday and French President Emmanuel Macron last week to discuss the contentious Iran nuclear deal and bitin...

If you pay a trip to South Sudan and visit the Eastern part of the landlocked country in East Africa, you’ll likely come across the Latuka tribe. They’re a small ethnic group living in mountains and settlements. The people of Latuka, or Otuho as they’re commonly referred to, are predominantly farmers keeping large herds of cattle, sheep and goat. They practise subsistence farming, which means everyone farms for himself or his family. They grow crops like groundnuts, sorghum, maize and tubers like yam and potato. The Latuka people are mostly traditionalists who believe in nature and ancestral worship. Over the years, they have stayed true to their belief. They have defied all forms of religious penetration from the white missionaries down to the breeze of Islam which is major in North Africa. Another thing that’s interesting to note about the Latuka people is the fact that they promote a communal lifestyle in the tribe. They share what they have with one another and there’s no single p...

*1.* _Take risks in your life. If you win, you can lead; if you lose, you can guide._ *2.* _People are not what they say but what they do; so judge them not from their words but from their actions._ *3.* _When someone hurts you, don't feel bad because it's a law of nature that the tree that bears the sweetest fruits gets maximum number of stones._ *4.* _Take whatever you can from your life because when life starts taking from you, it takes even your last breath._ *5.* _In this world, people will always throw stones on the path of your success. It depends on what you make from them - a wall or a bridge._ *6.* _Challenges make life interesting; overcoming them make life meaningful._ *7.* _There is no joy in victory without running the risk of defeat._ *8.* _A path without obstacles leads nowhere._ *9.* _Past is a nice place to visit but certainly not a good place to stay._ *10.* _You can't have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time._ *11...

The National Population Commission (NPC) says Nigeria’s estimated 198 million population figure recently announced by the commission is based on an annual population growth of 3.2 per cent, spanning from 2006 till date. The NPC Chairman, Eze Duruiheoma, made the disclosure in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Abuja. The NPC had on April 11, put Nigeria’s current population at 198 million people, with urban population growing at an average annual of about 6.5 per cent. Mr Duruiheoma announced the figure in New York while delivering Nigeria’s statement on Sustainable Cities, Human Mobility and International Migration at the 51st Session of Commission on Population and Development. The NPC boss told NAN that the current estimated figure of 198 million was not just concocted but from annual growth of 3.2 per cent, judging from the last census of 2006. He added that “there are deaths and births and nobody imagined that there will be mo...

LEADERSHIP - The country is gearing itself up for the General Elections in February next year and with President Muhammadu Buhari announcing that he will bid for the governing Party, APC’s ticket to run fo a second term, all hell has been let loose by the chaotic, ill-prepared opposition camp. A joke on *WhatsApp* last week was about the abuse and insults heaped on Muhammadu Buhari, attacking him for everything wrong with the country but failing to answer an important question: who do you have that is better? In democracies around the globe, second terms by incumbents are usually harder to get simply because, somehow, there is always some kind of anti-incumbency leading to a loss of faith among those supporters. For President Buhari, who won with massive votes in 2015, his major challenge is to do as well as he did, or even better. He came to power with a lot of expectations and Nigerians had, justifiably placed very high hopes on him. As we said sometimes back, he as a conse...

T he   readimission  of Nigeria  into the J.P Morgan Government Bond Index-Emerging Market (GBI-EM) is imminent following the successful operation of the Investors and Exporters (I&E) window for one year with turnover of $45 billion. Citing lack of liquidity and transparency in the country’s foreign exchange market, due to restrictions imposed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), J.P Morgan in October 2015 ejected Nigeria from its GBI-EM, which tracks local currency bonds issued by emerging market governments This prompted foreign investors to sell off their holdings of Nigeria’s  bonds. According to J.P Morgan, Nigeria would be eligible for re-inclusion if it could establish that it had upheld the inclusion criteria for at least 12 months. This means the authorities must restore liquidity to the forex market in a way that allowed foreign investors tracking the index to conduct transactions with minimum hurdle. This week marks one year of t...

Director General of Nigeria’s Budget Office, Ben Akabueze, has disclosed that all the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) have complied with President Muhammadu Buhari’s directives to submit details of their 2018 budget estimate to the appropriate committees of the National Assembly. The president had last month given March 23 as deadline for all agencies, corporations and government-owned companies to submit details of their 2018 budget estimates to the appropriate committees of the National Assembly. Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the 2018 IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington DC, Akabueze assured those seeking updates that the compliance is total. Asked what plans are in place to drive aggressive implementation as soon as the budget is passed, the DG Budget said, “the MDAs learning from the experience of the past are gearing up for the budget to be passed and taking preliminary steps in their procurement and waiting for the budg...

As Nigeria loses over N2.5 billion yearly to gas flaring alone in an age where South African firm, AgriProtein, ramps up multimillion Dollar investments through maggot farming, a technique of converting food waste into protein, the sky may be the limit for the country if it harnesses its 65-million- tonne-annual waste into a venture that can earn it Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs ). This initiative, known as zero waste economy where wastes are reduced, reused and recycled, is already making waves in some advanced countries where people throw things away as a last resort. But due to lack of proper waste management culture in Nigeria, this practice is yet to take root as Africa’s biggest economy continues to lose billions of Naira in rubbish dump annually. According to expert, another variety of wastes, flared gases, have equally drained the country of millions due to non-utilisation. So far, the effects of such wastes on environment and health are unquantifiable as they...

Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, has disclosed that the $322,515,931.83 Abacha loot recovered from the Swiss government, and already domiciled with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) will be channeled towards the Conditional Cash Transfer Programme (CCTP) of the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP). This is even as the Governor of CBN, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, has disclosed that the nation’s external reserves now stands at $47.93 billion. The Minister and the CBN Governor spoke at a joint press briefing at the end of the 2018 International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Spring Meeting in Washington DC, United States. The Conditional Cash Transfer is about paying N5,000 monthly to the poor and vulnerable persons in Nigeria. The money is paid bi-monthly at N10,000 for each beneficiary. “The objective of the National Social Safety Nets Project for Nigeria is to provide access to targeted transfers to poor and vulnerable households under an expanded national s...

Permanent Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance, Dr. Mahmoud Isa-Dutse (left); Minister for Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun; Emir of Kano, HRH Muhammadu Sanusi II; and Managing Director of Infrastructure Development for Africa, Mr. Jimoh Ibrahim, at the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington DC, United States. Finance minister allays repayment fears The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has expressed concern over Nigeria’s ability to service its external loans estimated at over $18.9billion, given its mono-product economy status and low revenue base. IMF Director, African Department, Abebe Aemro Selassie, while answering questions on rising debts in sub-Sahara African countries during a press conference on the sidelines of the IMF/World Bank Group meetings in Washington D.C., said notwithstanding the fact that Nigeria’s debt-to-GDP ratio is still okay relative to the average, there are still concerns about its ability to repay the loans.He said: “Our conce...

Insists on exchange rate flexibility The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is relishing the success of its monetary policy, especially regarding the foreign exchange, as the efforts have been finally acknowledged by the international financial community. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), in its recently released World Economic Outlook (WEO), had attributed Nigeria’s growth acceleration to “improved oil prices, revenue, and production, and the recently introduced foreign exchange measures that contributed to better foreign exchange availability.” The Acting Director, Corporate Communications Department, CBN, Isaac Okoroafor, responding to the development, told journalists on the sidelines of the Spring Meetings of the IMF/World Bank Group, said: “It’s all positive news. We needed to underscore this to say, ‘yes, we were right!.’“We knew our economy, and we have done what was then wrong, which we believed is the right thing; and we are ...

Mr Yusuf Kazaure, the Managing Director, Galaxy Backbone Ltd., says President Muhammadu Buhari’s Executive Order on local content will help to create employment opportunities for the Nigerian ICT youngsters. Kazaure made the remark at a newsmen Forum in Abuja. Buhari signed the Executive Order 5 to improve local content in public procurement with science, engineering and technology components. Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari The order is expected to promote the application of science, technology and innovation towards achieving the nation’s development goals across all sectors of the economy. Kazaure was optimistic that the executive order would help provide the enabling environment for entrepreneurs and manufacturers in the ICT sector to flourish in their areas of business. ‘’I think those executive orders are very necessary at this point and especially the one that focuses on utilisation of local content in the ICT. ‘’ICT has two layers. There is a layer that is focused ...

It’s time for personal responsibility. We charismatics must stop blaming everything on demons. People are usually the problem. Stop playing charis-matic games. Spiritual warfare is a reality, but we are not going to win the world to Jesus just by shouting at demonic prin-cipalities. We must pray, preach and persevere to see ultimate victory. Stop the foolishness. People who hit, slap or push others during prayer should be asked to sit down until they learn that gentleness is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. End all spiritual extort-ion now. Christian televi-sion ministries must cease and desist from all manipulative fundraising tactics. We must stop giv-ing platforms to prosper-ity preachers who make outlandish claims of sup-ernatural financial returns, especially when Scripture is twisted, deadlines are imposed and the poor are exploited. No more Lone Ran-gers. Those who claim to be ministers of God—whether they are traveling evangelists, local pastors or heads of m...

Emir of Kano , Alhaji Lamiso Sanusi , has decried the poor attendance of governors, ministers at the US-Nigeria Investment Summit 2018, on Saturday, saying it was discouraging to investors. The Summit was organized on the sidelines of IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington DC, with the theme: “Meet and Partner with Government Policy Makers Institutional Investors Corporate Leaders”. Only the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, was present at the Summit. Speaking to journalists, the monarch, a former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, expressed his displeasure that, despite the fact that a number of ministers and governors were in town, they did not turn up at the summit. “I have said it is not easy. Africa has been on the move for a long time, we have countries like Ghana, like Cote d’Ivoire, like Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, that have actually worked on how they make their environment attractive to investors; and that is the kind of conver...

Saudi Arabia was finalising regulation for the use of recreational drones, state media said Sunday, after a toy aircraft sparked security alarm as it hovered close to royal palaces in Riyadh. "The regulation for the use of remote controlled drones is in its final stages," the Saudi Press Agency said, citing the interior ministry. Until the new guidelines are adopted drone enthusiast must obtain police permission to fly their devices in "permitted sites" only, the ministry said. The statement comes a day after the kingdom said it shot down an unidentified toy drone that hovered over a neighbourhood home to royal palaces in the capital Riyadh. Unconfirmed videos on social media appeared to show heavy volleys of gunfire in the neighbourhood, triggering speculation of a possible coup attempt. But the government ruled out any major security breach, adding that an investigation had been launched into the incident. The Saudi civil aviation authority in 2015 banned t...