LAURETTA ONOCHIE

🌟The Amnesty Programme was inherited by the Pres. Buhari administration. As with most projects in Nigeria, Pres. Jonathan neither started it nor had exit plans for the 30,000 young men and women who signed up to lay down their arms and be rehabilitated to become useful members of our society. 🌟About Two years ago, many headlines in Nigerian news outfits screamed like this: "Amnesty Programme: FG has abandoned us – Nigerian students in UK send SOS to Jonathan Read more: http://dailypost.ng/2014/04/11/amnesty-programme-fg-abandoned-us-nigerian-students-uk-send-sos-jonathan/ 🌟For leaders who are emotionally intelligent, this could have been an embarrassment but President Jonathan's priorities did not include standing by the government's obligation and commitment to the Amnesty Programme. 🌟In spite of the delay in making appointments into the administration of President Buhari, an Adviser on the Abandoned Amnesty Programme, was appointed within two mont

Dear Sir, Congratulations on your appointment. Sen. Abdulmumin Jibrin made series of serious Allegations against the Speaker of the Nigerian House of Representatives and some other Principal Officers of the House. When he arrived home straight from making these allegations, Police Officers were waiting at his door. They escorted him back to  the Police Station. On their way to the Police Station, Hon. Jibrin called his Lawyers and they advised him not to make any statement until they arrived. The Police, Hon Jibrin and his Lawyers assembled at the Police Station. The interrogation began. It was long and ended at about 3am the following morning. The Police looked at the Statement made by Hon. Jibrin, side by side with the evidence he provided. They decided that there were strong evidence that Hon Yakubu Dogara, Hon. Yusuf Lasun, Hon Leo Ogor and Hon Ado Doguwa, had conspired to defraud Nigerians. At exactly 5am, four sets of crack police officers and me

NIGERIANS know what to expect when they approach police checkpoints. “How can you appreciate me?” ask officers, AK-47s dangling languidly from their shoulders. “Happy weekend!” say security guards from the early hours of Friday morning. Or simply: “What do you have for me?” Nigeria, as David Cameron, Britain’s former prime minister, pointed out, is “fantastically corrupt”. In Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, it is 31st from the bottom. Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, a former military ruler, wants to change this. How is he doing? Few doubt Mr Buhari’s intent. But the task he has set himself is Herculean. Successive military and civilian governments have siphoned money from the vast revenues of their oil industry. Many locals think the problem reached unprecedented heights under the previous administration of Goodluck Jonathan. In March an official audit found that the state-owned oil company withheld over $25 billion from the public purse between 201

🚆 The Modernisation programme commenced in 2006, with the signing of agreement between Nigeria and the CCECC for construction of a standard gauge Lagos-Kaduna line costing $8.3 billion, 🚆 This was a part of a total repackage for the upgrade of the entire rail system to standardise gauge over a 25- year period. 🚆 The project include the Port Harcourt-Kano line and an additional one, Lagos-Calabar line (East-West) line. 🚆 The counterpart funding was faulty on the part of Nigeria, while it contravened the law. 🚆 The government of late Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua discovered that the contract did not follow due process and that the project was inflated. 🚆 Late President Yar’Adua visited china, re-negotiated and re-scoped the entire project. Partners agreed to first, get the services back and then construct standard gauge lines. 🚆 The project was segmented. The completion date of rehabilitation of Lagos-Kano and Port Harcourt-Maiduguri lines was set for December 2011.

In September 2015, Beyoncé sat on a yacht drinking sparkling wine with her legs wrapped under a striped, earth-toned blanket as the Faraglioni rocks, near Capri on Italy’s west coast, passed by. The singer and her husband, Jay Z, paid a reported $900,000 that week to sail the Mediterranean Sea on the Galactica Star, a 65-meter private cruiser with a helipad, 10 dining areas, Jacuzzi and sun deck. Unknown to the celebrity couple, the yacht’s owner was soon to be a wanted man. Held through a shell company created by the law firm at the heart of the Panama Papers scandal, Mossack Fonseca, the yacht is now caught up in a massive investigation in Nigeria. The government claims the yacht was bought with profits from crude oil sales that were diverted and never paid to authorities. The Galactica Star’s owner is Kolawole Aluko, a petroleum and aviation mogul who is one of four defendants accused of helping to cheat Nigeria out of nearly $1.8 billion owed to the government o

If you were a lover of reggae music in the 1970s, you would certainly know “Time Hard”, a hit song by The Pioneers, the Jamaican three-man band. “Everyday,” they sang, sonorously, “things are getting worse.” That song was released in 1972. At the time, Nigeria was producing two million barrels of crude oil per day and selling at an average price of $1.8 per barrel. We were not yet oil-dependent, so the revenue was basically a bonus. By 1974, oil was selling for $11, six times the 1972 price, and our stomach ballooned. We became helplessly hooked on petrodollars. The only song Nigerians could be singing was: “Things are getting better.” The Pioneers would not sell. But their song still became very relevant in the early 1980s. Average oil price fell from $34 in 1981 to $32 in 1982 and $29 in 1983, meaning serious trouble. Oil boom had sent us into an expenditure overdrive and overkill. We had taken on massive projects, importing recklessly and accumulating debts like medals. Our fo

🔥 Some days ago, Engr. Babachir David Lawal, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation [SGF], told the National Assembly that their  ₦60 billion budget for constituency Projects, stands unimplementable. About time somebody told them the truth and to their faces! 🔥 With a 40% shortfall in our nation's income, it's an unnecessary illegal burden on the people of Nigeria especially as the executive also, has provided for the same people. 🔥 Again and most importantly, Our constitution has no provisions for Constituency Projects or in any other name. We can bet you most of the lawmakers, do not know this fact. The role of the Lawmakers is to make laws. Full stop. 🔥 It is the duty of the Executive to initiate a budget. It's also their duty to provide needed amenities across the nation through the implementation of the budget as approved and passed into law by the National Assembly. 🔥 What the National Assembly did was to initiate constituency projects budge