USA to assist Nigeria in combating HIV with $500 million

The U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr Terence McCulley, on Monday in Abuja said his country had supported Nigeria with a grant of 500 million dollars in the fight against HIV/AIDS and other related diseases since 2005.

McCulley said this at the inauguration of the Defence Reference Laboratory by Mrs Olusola Obada, the Minister of State for Defence, at the Mogadishu Cantonment.

He said the laboratory, which is the first of its kind in the sub-region, was funded from the grant.

"The Reference Laboratory Programme is part of our $500m assistance to Nigeria since 2005 when the partnership began between U.S. Department of Defence and your Ministry of Defence.

"The partnership between U.S. Department of Defence (DOD) and Nigeria's Ministry of Defence (NMOD) through the Walter Reed Programme (WRP-N) and the Emergency Plan Implementation Committee (EPIC) has grown strong," he said.

MCculley said the partnership was evidenced by the commissioning of a world-class Defence Reference Laboratory (DRL).

According to him, the DRL was a critical piece for health care, enabling world-class diagnostic and laboratory monitoring services for military personnel and civilian population living in the surrounding communities.

He said the DRL would continue to grow, improve health care for the community it served and become a centre for excellence in Nigeria and West Africa sub-region.

In her remarks,Obada said the commencement of full activities at the DRL would lead to great improvement in the handling of HIV programmes and ultimately translate to better care for those living with the virus.

Obada, who was represented by Dr. Evelyn Ngige, said the establishment of the DRL was in line with Mr President's Transformation Agenda in the health sector through strengthening of indigenous capabilities and a drastic reduction on dependence of facilities abroad for similar services.

"Expectedly, this facility will promote the health of our troops, thereby ensuring their combat fitness for International Peace Support Operations and internal security challenges, " she said .

The minister commended the U.S. government for the support and urged the professionals that would be making use of the laboratory to justify the confidence reposed in them.


"But the beauty of the programme is that in all the 24 sites where we have in Nigeria where we treat our troops, civilians are also taken care of and the communities near the barracks also benefit from the programme, " she added.

Also speaking, Maj.-Gen. Tahir Umar, the Chairman of Emergency Plan Implementation Committee, said the success of the sites operated by EPIC across the country had led to the need to provide a laboratory that would be able to assure quality control of all programme sites.

Umar said the establishment of the laboratory was made possible through the funding by the U.S. Defense Department and the Ministry of Defence.

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Power minister Prof. Bart Nnaji resigns

Minister of Power, Prof. Bart Nnaji, on Tuesday resigned from office amid controversies and allegations of conflict of interest in the privatisation process.

Besides being at loggerheads with Power Holding Company of Nigeria’s workers on sundry issues, he was said to have interests in two firms that submitted bids for the Afam Power Plc and the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company Plc.

The PUNCH learnt on Tuesday that Nnaji must have been pressured into resigning from the Federal Executive Council by the Presidency because of fears that the issue of conflict of interest could damage the credibility of the privatisation process, which has local and foreign investors as bidders.

The privatisation of 17 electricity firms is scheduled to be concluded in two months’ time.

Meanwhile, President Goodluck Jonathan said he had accepted the resignation.

In a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati, the President thanked Nnaji for his services to the nation.

It was gathered that it was when it was established that Nnaji had interest in two firms, Skipper Nigeria Limited and Eastern Electric Nigeria Limited, that the National Council on Privatisation chaired by Vice- President Namadi Sambo, decided to cancel the technical bid evaluation process conducted for the two firms.

The NCP had last Friday named seven firms as the successful bidders for five generation companies.

According to Chairman of the National Council on Privatisation’s Technical Committee, Mr. Atedo Peterside, the successful bidders qualified to take part in the financial bidding slated for September.

The preferred bidders for Ughelli Power Plant are Phoenix Electricity, Transcorp Consortium and Ampiron Power Distribution Limited.

Two bidders, CMEC Energy and GPN Nestoil Power Services Limited, were named for the Sapele Power Plant.

Only one firm each emerged successful for Geregu, Kainji and Shiroro Power Plants. They are Ampiron Power Distribution Limited, Mainstream Energy Solution Limited and North South Power Company Limited respectively.

He explained that the seven firms were chosen after scaling the 750 pass mark for the bidding process which involved submission of bids by pre-qualified bidders.

There was speculation that the NCP had been silent on the bidders that were prequalified for the Afam Power Station because of the conflict of interest that had arisen during the privatisation process.

A national newspaper had reported that Nnaji, a member of the NCP by virtue of his position as Minister of Power, had told the council that O & M Solutions of Pakistan, a member of one of the consortia bidding for Afam, had worked as a contractor for Geometric Power.

Nnaji further notified the NCP that Geometric Power had a minority stake in Eastern Electric Nigeria Limited, which had submitted technical and financial bids for Enugu Distribution Company Limited on July 31.

He also reportedly informed the council that owing to his position, he had notified President Jonathan of his company’s bid for Enugu Distribution Company, and brought it to their attention that although he had an interest in Geometric Power, he had resigned from its board and transferred his shares to a blind trust.

Following this disclosure, Nnaji was said to have excused himself from the consideration of the report of the technical bids.

Having been informed of Nnaji’s direct and indirect interest in two companies being privatised, the report said the council decided to cancel the technical evaluation that had been conducted for Afam and disbanded the evaluation team.

Reacting to the issue of conflict of interest few hours before his resignation, Nnaji said he had voluntarily on Friday, August 24 , 2012, informed other members of the National Council on Privatisation at a meeting, which considered the report on the technical evaluation of bids for generation companies. He said he had revealed to the committee that a company with which he was associated before he joined the government in 2010, was a client of a member of a consortium interested in acquiring majority shares of the Afam power plant in Rivers State.

A statement from his office then said, “The minister consequently applied to be excused from all deliberations at the meeting, and he maintained his ground despite the insistence of some of his colleagues.

“The minister ought to be commended for exemplary commitment to transparency, probity and the common good. If most public officers had been behaving like Professor Bart Nnaji , there would not have been trust deficit in Nigeria over the decades in respect of the relationship between the people and those in government. The unprecedented domestic and international investor confidence in the

Nigerian power sector is directly traceable to the personal and professional integrity of the process drivers like Professor Nnaji.

“We welcome wholeheartedly the decision of the National Council on Privatisation that bids for the Afam plant be evaluated all over again because justice should not only be done but also seen to have been done by all and sundry.’’

Before he finally threw in the towel, the former minister had also been at the receiving end of the war declared by workers of the PHCN.

The workers had opened a can of worms on some financial transactions allegedly carried out by Nnaji which reportedly drained the purse of PHCN.

They had given the embattled minister a seven-day ultimatum to explain what he did with the money running into millions of naira which they claimed was withdrawn from the firm’s coffer.

Vice-President of the National Union of Electricity Workers Employees, Mr. Etete Ntukuben, last Friday, called for a probe, not just of the PHCN superannuation account, but the entire account of the PHCN.

Ntukuben said that investigators should be brought in to take a critical look at the withdrawals by the former minister from the account of the PHCN.

“Let us have a holistic look at the PHCN account apart from the pension account; we should take a look at the minister’s withdrawals.

A lot of millions of naira have been withdrawn and given to soldiers and policemen in the guise of security maintenance,” he said.

PUNCH

$400 billion USD looted from Nigeria since independence

Former World Bank vice president for Africa Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, yesterday disclosed that $400 billion of Nigeria's oil revenue was either stolen or misappropriated since the country's independence in 1960.

Ezekwesili stated this while presenting a paper captioned, "Corruption, National Development, The Bar and The Judiciary" at the ongoing 52nd Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Abuja.

Ezekwesili also noted that while oil accounted for about 90 per cent of the value of Nigeria's exports over 80 per cent of that money ended up in the hands of 1 per cent of the population and stressed that the fight against corruption and demand for good governance must go beyond the actions or efforts of the government.

She said: "In fact, results reveal that as much as 20 per cent of the entire capital expenditure will end up in private pockets annually. The negative effect of corruption was starkly demonstrated by the fact that based on current track record. Nigeria will miss all the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) targets set in 2000 in spite of its natural and human resources. There is no doubt that at the heart of any progress towards meeting these goals is the quality of governance at all levels of government, yet the general perception is validated by the revealed large scale corruption in the petroleum sector especially, but not limited to the management of the subsidy scheme by all the relevant agencies of government."

Poor governance of public resources and assets in Nigeria she added is worsening at every level of government, institutions of state, the private sector and is engulfing the wider society and said a more significant impact of corruption is on the government bottom line and in the teacher-less, desk-less schools which only hint at the extent of the problem in Nigeria.

Ezekwesili revealed that "a study by the World Bank, showed that annual worldwide losses due to corruption amount to between one to four thousand US Dollars while the Global Financial Integrity estimated that between 1970 and 2008 Africa lost more than $854 billion in illicit financial outflows, an amount which is far in excess of official development inflows.

"Another report of the Transparency International (TI) put the amount of bribes companies paid politicians and other public officials in developing and transiting economies annually at $ 40 billion in 2009 and consider that Africa would constitute a major part of since we know the continent's ranking on governance in the lower regions of the TI's corruption perception index," the former minister stated

She stressed that civil society organisations like the NBA and the nation's judiciary and non state actors can play a significant role in making public budgeting more transparent and accountable and engage in the various stages of the budget process that can strengthen the oversight process and accountability in the use of public resources.

She revealed: "An independent judiciary and the bar is important for preserving the rule of law and is, therefore, the most important facet of good governance. The judicial system has an important role to play ultimately in ensuring better public governance. There is no area where the judgment of the Supreme Court has not played a significant role in the governance of any nation whether in environment, human rights, gender justice, education, minorities, police reforms among other.

"The rule of law, one of the most significant characteristics of good governance, prevails in India for example, because India has an independent judiciary that has been sustained owing to the support and assistance from an independent bar which has been fearless in advocating the cause of the underprivileged and the deprived.

So my last words is "who among you is ready to let character be their destiny? Count me in should you need a slightly learned friend" she declared.

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President Barack Obama declares Nigeria is world's next economic giant

United States President Barack Obama has declared Nigeria as the world's next economic success story, stressing that this was one of the major reasons why his government was committed to helping the country build strong democratic institutions and remove constraints to trade and investment through the African Growth and Opportunity Act.

Making this declaration at the ongoing US-Nigeria Trade and Investment Forum, an event organised by the Nigerians in Diaspora Organisation (NIDOA) in Washington DC, yesterday, Obama who was represented by Ambassador Eunice Reddick, said that his country expanded opportunities for Nigeria to effectively access markets and diversify its economy beyond a narrow reliance on natural resources.

"As we support these efforts, the Diaspora can play an important role in contributing to a strong, vibrant and economically prosperous Nigeria" he noted.

Obama said his country was investing in Nigeria's success because it recognises her as a strategic center of gravity, whose success would as well be Africa's success.

The US leader also made it known that his government would encourage Nigeria in the area of private investment in the power sector as well as other sectors to help seal the promise of growth and opportunity for all Nigerians.

He added that the US government would also work to strengthen Nigeria's agriculture sector, which employs nearly 70 per cent of the country's population, by encouraging improvements in infrastructure that would facilitate agricultural growth.

America would help to liberalise Nigeria's trade policies to foster regional trade, reform the customs system to bring it in line with global best practices, and also encourage policy reforms to enable private investment in agriculture.

Speaking on the US-Nigeria Bi-national agreement, Obama said that the joint Commission has grown into a forum for frank, high-level conversations in which both nations have seen substantial reforms and mutually reinforcing initiatives implemented in Nigeria.

His words: "Some key outcomes of the Bi-national Commission so far have been successful integration of civil society into the electoral process prior to the 2011 elections, sustained and elevated dialogue with energy sector officials on energy policy, reforms to increase investment, and agreement to support the development of a civil affairs training centre in the coming year."

"Energy and Investment, the subject of one of the four working groups of the Binational Commission, is critical to Nigeria-s present and future"

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