Indications emerged on Friday that
President Muhammadu Buhari would probe the Joint Task Force in the Niger
Delta as part of the drives to fish out oil thieves under the
administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan.
Buhari, at an interactive session with
Nigerians in the Diaspora at the Nigerian Embassy in Washington DC, the
United States, during his four-day official visit to the country,
accused some officials of the immediate past administration of stealing
one million barrels of crude oil daily.
He said, “We have started getting
documents where some of the senior people in government, former
ministers, some of them operated as much as five accounts and were
moving about one million barrels per day on their own. We have started
getting those documents.
“I
assure you that whichever documents we are able to get and subsequently
trace the sale of the crude or transfer of money from ministries,
departments, Central Bank of Nigeria, we will ask for the cooperation of
those countries to return those monies to the Federation Accounts.
“And we will use those documents to arrest those people and prosecute them. This, I promise Nigerians.”
The Presidency and military sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Saturday PUNCH that Buhari’s intention to probe Jonathan’s administration would be extended to the JTF in the Niger Delta.
They said the JTF leaders during
Jonathan’s administration as well as the current leadership would be
interrogated with the aim of fishing out the oil thieves’ collaborators
among its rank and file.
The Special Adviser to the President on
Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, said the government was aware
that if crude oil could be stolen in that magnitude established by the
President, it could either be through connivance or through directives.
Adesina said that in an era of impunity, a directive could just be given and the commodity would be stolen.
Asked if the government would beam its
searchlight on the JTF, the presidential spokesperson said everybody
involved in the connivance would have questions to answer.
The JTF, which is composed of troops of
the army, navy, airforce and the mobile police, was set up in 2004 to
restore order in the Niger Delta.
It has metamorphosed from “Operation Flush” to “Operation Restore Hope” to the current “Operation Pulo Shield.”
It was set up to prevent oil theft,
illegal refining of petroleum products and other criminal activities in
the Niger Delta’s 3,014 creeks and waterways.
But there have been allegations that oil
theft under the past administration was done under the watchful eyes of
the JTF personnel and other agencies involved in security in the Niger
Delta.
Backing the proposed probe, the Civil
Liberties Organisation in Akwa Ibom State urged the Federal Government
to dismantle the JTF.
The state CLO chairman, Mr. Clifford
Thomas, said if the JTF personnel were found culpable, they should be
punished, including their civilian collaborators.
Thomas told one of our correspondents in
Uyo on Thursday that there were four sets of people that might have
connived with the JTF to commit the heinous crime.
He said, “Those involved in the oil
theft in the country include the military men and their boys; the
politicians who aided them; the civil servants, especially those in the
Nigerian Labour Congress stream, and the private profiteers (the
businessmen), who are parts of the entire process. No ordinary Nigerian
from all indication partakes in the mess.
“These are the criminals; they have been
doing the illegal business for time immemorial. These people have been
perpetuating the criminal activity against the Nigerian masses and the
government.”
Thomas, however, expressed the CLO’s readiness to support Buhari in the fight against corruption in the country.
He said, “The CLO will support Buhari to
ensure that all those who stole the public fund that should have been
enough to build 200 industries in Akwa Ibom State and other parts of the
country are punished and the money recovered.
“All the people involved in the crime,
whether they are former ministers, clerics, civil servants or
businessmen should be brought to justice.”
The CLO chairman urged the Federal Government not to accept plea bargaining from financial crime offenders.
“The government must recover everything they stole and still send them to jail,” he said.
In the same vein, a social commentator
and rights activist, Dr. Jackson Omenazu, said it would be difficult for
anybody to deny that operatives of the JTF were not involved in oil
theft in the Niger Delta.
Omenazu, who is the Chancellor of the
International Society for Social Justice and Human Rights, explained
that there was no way oil theft would have continued in the region if
the security operatives were diligent enough.
He said, “It is correct and evidence
abound that the JTF operatives are involved in oil theft. I have
witnessed even where the lower rank and file get money from oil deals
and buy more than 15 vehicles.”
A rights activist and Coordinator,
Environmental Right Action, Mr. Alagoa Morris, said multinational oil
companies were also culpable in oil theft in the Niger Delta.
“It is sad to note that while the JTF
operatives still compel us to raise our hands before passing wherever
there is a flow station in the creeks, criminal activities such as sea
piracy, illegal bunkering and kidnapping take place in the creeks.
“As for oil theft, that is a crime which
the JTF and oil companies are also culpable. Even the JTF personnel
will agree that they are part of this crime in two ways: aiding and
abetting and setting vessels loaded with crude oil ablaze, leading to
further degradation of the already battered region’s environment.
“As for the protection of lives and
property in the Niger Delta are concerned, I see the JTF showing
seriousness only when the officers and men are attacked. It is only then
we hear how JTF would chase the criminals or alleged perpetrators to
their hideouts and either kill or arrest them.”
A public affairs analyst, Mr. Igoni Davies, suggested holistic review of the JTF’s activities to minimise the oil theft.
He said, “The government’s efforts to
protect major oil installations are not achieving the set goals and for
the menace to be minimised, there should be a holistic review of the
activities of the security agencies patrolling the waterways,
particularly the oil and gas region.”
Efforts to get reactions from the JTF
Commander, Maj.-Gen. Emmanuel Atewe, were futile as his mobile phone
rang out. The commander also did not respond to a text message sent to
his mobile phone.
But, the Coordinator, Joint Media
Campaign Centre, Joint Military Task Force, Lt.-Col Ado Isa, said the
JTF was not aware of any plan by Buhari to probe the outfit.
Isa said as far as JTF was concerned; it was operating within its mandate.
He said, “The JTF was established to maintain security and to fight against oil theft and other illegalities in the Niger Delta.
“Niger Delta consists of nine states and
it has five sectors. We have a mandate and we operate within the
mandate. The JTF declared zero tolerance for oil-related theft within
the waterways.
“JTF is everywhere. It has made many
arrests and those arrested were prosecuted by relevant prosecuting
agencies. There is no way the JTF personnel will connive with ministers
or others to perpetrate illegalities.
“But where JTF men are found culpable in
any criminal activity, such person should be severely punished to serve
as a deterrent to others. The one allegedly involving past ministers,
JTF has nothing to do with that as we have no business with exporting
crude oil.”
He said the JTF recently impounded 2000 metric tonnes vessel laden with thousands of litres of illegal products.
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Opinion/Feature | 25 July 2015 07:42 CET
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WHY AMERICA WANTS GAY MARRIAGE IN NIGERIA
By thewillnigeria.com
Previous | Next
It started in hush tones long before the shameless but divisive verdict by the United States Supreme Court of June 26th 2015 which did not just stop at legalising same sex marriage in the entire fifty states of the United States of America but proceeded to name it a human right. The United States Supreme Court usurped the powers of the United Nations Human Rights Council to confer the position of a human right to gay marriage.
It started as capacity building workshops funded lavishly by lobby groups from the United States of America for reporters on responsible reportage of LGBT’S (Lesbians, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) rights in Nigeria preparatory to pushing against the moves to legislative against that despicable practice in Nigeria.
It never came as a shock when amorphous groups with names unrelated to same sex issues but registered overnight by Corporate Affairs Commission began championing the advocacy to push back the national momentum against the growing trends of gay practices around the Western World.
Yours faithfully was in the thick of all these developments and counter developments and even appeared as a resource person on one or two occasions in these sorts of capacity building workshops shrouded in secrecy so the resource persons drawn from Nigeria and the participants weren’t aware that they were been brainwashed to accommodate same sex practices amongst some Nigerians.
All through the administrations of Olusegun Obasanjo and the earlier part of the late Umaru Musa Yaradua, concerted efforts were made by some United States fund raise organisations to infiltrate the organized civil society communities. Those non governmental individuals who accepted to plunge into the campaign to win the hearts and minds of Nigerians on same sex relationship were sponsored to attend International LGBT’S events in some World capitals like Brussels, Washington DC, Frankfurt in Germany and Geneva even as they were paid handsomely. The Western promoters of gay sexual practices have become so adept at spreading their messages in the same passion and formats that the early White missionaries adopted in introducing foreign religions to us. To these promoters of gay practices they are actually involved in ‘missions ‘ to indoctrinate the unsuspecting members of the Nigerian community to embrace the lifestyle as acceptable. What all these covert and overt effort to spread the message of gay sexual relationship to Nigerians by these foreign ‘missionaries’ demonstrates is the desire by the West to win the hearts and minds of Nigerians since by some Western estimates Nigeria houses the largest numbers of people who follow one organised religion or the other like Christianity, Islam and the African Traditional Religion (ATR). For them winning the propaganda battles to introduce gay sexual practices in Nigeria may signal their greatest conquest since Nigeria has the greatest number of black people globally.
Again the zeal being demonstrated by pro-gay Western groups towards ensuring that they infiltrate Nigeria is partly motivated by their conviction that since every 4 out of 6 Black persons are Nigerians it therefore follows that the country that has the largest number of antagonists to that gay practices have been won over and therefore their international mission to spread equality would have been satisfactorily actualised.
So when sometimes this year it emerged that President Barack Obama had invited the Nigerian President who just won election in March to join him for a meeting most people became apprehensive that Buhari may sacrifice the extant anti-graft marriage law in the alter of winning a World Power. When the New York based Human Rights Watch started running series of essays in the media to call on President Obama to pressurise his guest from Nigeria to accept gay marriage more suspicions that the Nigerian government may capitulate under the heavy weight of pro Gay Marriage pressure of the Americans became increasingly overwhelming.
So when the Nigerian team left the shores of Nigeria to meet their American counterparts exactly a month after the US Supreme Court’s pro -Gay Marriage Judgment Nigerians waited with suspended animation to get feelers on how far the Nigerian President absorbed the pro-gay Marriage pressure. It has emerged that for now the Nigerian President didn’t disappoint.
It is now clear from Presidency signal that President Muhammadu Buhari has outrightly rejected the gay marriage offer by the United States of America, stating that sodomy is against the law of Nigeria and strange to our culture.
This was disclosed by the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina who said that the issue of gay marriage was discussed during Buhari's meeting with American legislators shortly after the bilateral parley with Barrack Obama, but its implementation in Nigeria was rejected by the President.
“The issue of gay marriage came up here yesterday. PMB was point blank. Sodomy is against the law in Nigeria, and abhorrent to our culture,” he posted on his Twitter handle.
But let me give the Nigerian leader a hint. The intense campaign to abolish the stringent anti-Gay marriage legislation in Nigeria hasn’t ended with that emphatic no as an answer reportedly given to the United States congressional delegation that met recently with President Buhari and his team. The lobby groups championing Gay sexual orientations are rich, sophisticated, well connected to powerful industrialists in the Western World and indeed not a few of some of the richest Americans are openly gay and so have budgeted generous percentages of their wealth to spread the message of Gay marriage World wide. These global leaders have the Money, the power and importantly they have the passion to pursue this goal vigorously to in their own estimate see to it that conservative Religionists such as Christians and Moslems who abhor Gay sexual orientations are degraded, defeated and compelled to mellow down on their anti-gay rhetoric. These powerful funders of global Gay movements are some of the most generous campaign funders in USA and UK and so the have the advantage of this dangerous proximity to the White House and No 10 Downing Street and can influence these political power brokers to vigorously pressurise President Buhari to assent to their objective aforementioned.
Relatedly, groups in the West awash with donor funds from their home countries are already in Nigeria with huge war chests and for most average Nigerian civil society activists they will never refuse the opportunity to pick up some fast money in hard currency to support the spread of Gay sexual practices in Nigeria. Our group has been approached but we refused on the ground of principle that we are convinced that marriage remains a sacred union of a man and woman of adult and consenting ages.
Read more at: http://www.thenigerianvoice.com/news/186190/1/why-america-wants-gay-marriage-in-nigeria.html
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Opinion/Feature | 25 July 2015 07:42 CET
0 Comment
WHY AMERICA WANTS GAY MARRIAGE IN NIGERIA
By thewillnigeria.com
Previous | Next
It started in hush tones long before the shameless but divisive verdict by the United States Supreme Court of June 26th 2015 which did not just stop at legalising same sex marriage in the entire fifty states of the United States of America but proceeded to name it a human right. The United States Supreme Court usurped the powers of the United Nations Human Rights Council to confer the position of a human right to gay marriage.
It started as capacity building workshops funded lavishly by lobby groups from the United States of America for reporters on responsible reportage of LGBT’S (Lesbians, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) rights in Nigeria preparatory to pushing against the moves to legislative against that despicable practice in Nigeria.
It never came as a shock when amorphous groups with names unrelated to same sex issues but registered overnight by Corporate Affairs Commission began championing the advocacy to push back the national momentum against the growing trends of gay practices around the Western World.
Yours faithfully was in the thick of all these developments and counter developments and even appeared as a resource person on one or two occasions in these sorts of capacity building workshops shrouded in secrecy so the resource persons drawn from Nigeria and the participants weren’t aware that they were been brainwashed to accommodate same sex practices amongst some Nigerians.
All through the administrations of Olusegun Obasanjo and the earlier part of the late Umaru Musa Yaradua, concerted efforts were made by some United States fund raise organisations to infiltrate the organized civil society communities. Those non governmental individuals who accepted to plunge into the campaign to win the hearts and minds of Nigerians on same sex relationship were sponsored to attend International LGBT’S events in some World capitals like Brussels, Washington DC, Frankfurt in Germany and Geneva even as they were paid handsomely. The Western promoters of gay sexual practices have become so adept at spreading their messages in the same passion and formats that the early White missionaries adopted in introducing foreign religions to us. To these promoters of gay practices they are actually involved in ‘missions ‘ to indoctrinate the unsuspecting members of the Nigerian community to embrace the lifestyle as acceptable. What all these covert and overt effort to spread the message of gay sexual relationship to Nigerians by these foreign ‘missionaries’ demonstrates is the desire by the West to win the hearts and minds of Nigerians since by some Western estimates Nigeria houses the largest numbers of people who follow one organised religion or the other like Christianity, Islam and the African Traditional Religion (ATR). For them winning the propaganda battles to introduce gay sexual practices in Nigeria may signal their greatest conquest since Nigeria has the greatest number of black people globally.
Again the zeal being demonstrated by pro-gay Western groups towards ensuring that they infiltrate Nigeria is partly motivated by their conviction that since every 4 out of 6 Black persons are Nigerians it therefore follows that the country that has the largest number of antagonists to that gay practices have been won over and therefore their international mission to spread equality would have been satisfactorily actualised.
So when sometimes this year it emerged that President Barack Obama had invited the Nigerian President who just won election in March to join him for a meeting most people became apprehensive that Buhari may sacrifice the extant anti-graft marriage law in the alter of winning a World Power. When the New York based Human Rights Watch started running series of essays in the media to call on President Obama to pressurise his guest from Nigeria to accept gay marriage more suspicions that the Nigerian government may capitulate under the heavy weight of pro Gay Marriage pressure of the Americans became increasingly overwhelming.
So when the Nigerian team left the shores of Nigeria to meet their American counterparts exactly a month after the US Supreme Court’s pro -Gay Marriage Judgment Nigerians waited with suspended animation to get feelers on how far the Nigerian President absorbed the pro-gay Marriage pressure. It has emerged that for now the Nigerian President didn’t disappoint.
It is now clear from Presidency signal that President Muhammadu Buhari has outrightly rejected the gay marriage offer by the United States of America, stating that sodomy is against the law of Nigeria and strange to our culture.
This was disclosed by the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina who said that the issue of gay marriage was discussed during Buhari's meeting with American legislators shortly after the bilateral parley with Barrack Obama, but its implementation in Nigeria was rejected by the President.
“The issue of gay marriage came up here yesterday. PMB was point blank. Sodomy is against the law in Nigeria, and abhorrent to our culture,” he posted on his Twitter handle.
But let me give the Nigerian leader a hint. The intense campaign to abolish the stringent anti-Gay marriage legislation in Nigeria hasn’t ended with that emphatic no as an answer reportedly given to the United States congressional delegation that met recently with President Buhari and his team. The lobby groups championing Gay sexual orientations are rich, sophisticated, well connected to powerful industrialists in the Western World and indeed not a few of some of the richest Americans are openly gay and so have budgeted generous percentages of their wealth to spread the message of Gay marriage World wide. These global leaders have the Money, the power and importantly they have the passion to pursue this goal vigorously to in their own estimate see to it that conservative Religionists such as Christians and Moslems who abhor Gay sexual orientations are degraded, defeated and compelled to mellow down on their anti-gay rhetoric. These powerful funders of global Gay movements are some of the most generous campaign funders in USA and UK and so the have the advantage of this dangerous proximity to the White House and No 10 Downing Street and can influence these political power brokers to vigorously pressurise President Buhari to assent to their objective aforementioned.
Relatedly, groups in the West awash with donor funds from their home countries are already in Nigeria with huge war chests and for most average Nigerian civil society activists they will never refuse the opportunity to pick up some fast money in hard currency to support the spread of Gay sexual practices in Nigeria. Our group has been approached but we refused on the ground of principle that we are convinced that marriage remains a sacred union of a man and woman of adult and consenting ages.
Read more at: http://www.thenigerianvoice.com/news/186190/1/why-america-wants-gay-marriage-in-nigeria.html
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