News Release: Jos Massacre: Testing The Will Of The Acting President

Another rude shock hit the country on Sunday with the outbreak of violence in Jos claiming between 200-500 lives from different media reports.

It is a sad development that this orgy of killings has taken place again in Jos, a permanent flashpoint in the last two years.

If true be told, the latest crisis is an indictment of the security forces in Nigeria which have largely shown failure of intelligence by not being able to nip this kind of crisis in the bud.

We call on the Acting President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan to get all the security forces cracking towards the following end:

Immediately restore normalcy to the affected areas,

Apprehend the sponsors and perpetrators of this mayhem so that they can be brought to book. The inability to punish architects of such violence in the past has been an enabling factor for others to do same,

Probe the role of soldiers who allegedly refused to respond to distress calls from the villagers until the attackers finished their killings. This is necessary to ascertain if there is any linkage between those deploying troops to the airport without the knowledge of the Acting President and the likely sponsors of this violence.

There is every reason to suspect that there are sinister forces plotting the destabilization of the country who may be using the serial violence to create an enabling environment. The more reason why we must get to the root of this.

Our heats go to all the families who have lost dear ones in this latest crisis as we call on the government to put an end to this needless loss of lives and property.

‘Yinka Odumakin
National Publicity Secretary,
Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG)

News Release: Stop Shielding Corrupt Agencies And Commissioners, DPA Warns Lagos State Assembly

                                            [Fashola, Lagos State Governor]

The Democratic Peoples’ Alliance (DPA) has challenged the Lagos State House of Assembly to publish the names of agencies and their heads that the Legislature claimed mismanaged fiscal votes in the 2009 budget.

The House Committee on Appropriation had cited its indictment of some government agencies as reason for shaving off nearly 10 percent from Governor Raji Fashola’s initial budget proposal for 2010.

“We Lagosians suffering the brunt of misappropriated public funds say, enough is enough. Time has come for the Assembly to blow the whistle on unscrupulous Lagos public officers who have helped themselves to the till,” DPA said in a statement by its Director of Publicity, Felix Oboagwina.

Noting that the House had failed to follow up a similar verdict in 2007 after its probe of council administrators unearthed over N700 million in misappropriated funds, the party insisted that the House must muster the political will to pursue the fresh allegations to a logical conclusion.

“In its oversight function, the Assembly’s Appropriations Committee had made these startling discoveries. But it must do more than raising an alarm. It should forward its discoveries to relevant agencies like the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission and other appropriate agencies in the spirit of public accountability and transparency,” DPA said.

The House appropriated N389.570 billion for this year’s budget, slashing off N40.026 billion from the N429.596 billion that the Executive initially proposed. Legislators premised the cut partly on the complaint that some of last year’s funds remained unaccountable.

On its own part, DPA blamed the inexplicable disappearance of allocated public funds for Lagos’s poor rating as 136th out of 140 selected cities in the world.

“Those who should be bringing sectoral and infrastructural development and improvement to Lagos have been helping themselves to the till,” DPA lamented.

Accusing the government of covering up corrupt officers, DPA insisted that indicted heads of MDAs must be identified and made to account for the mismanaged sums.

“When it comes to corruption, mismanagement and misappropriation, the government ought to let everybody answer his father’s name,” the party said. “It is even worse when the House that should be providing the constitutional and institutional check-and-balance condones corruption by colluding in cover-ups instead of comprehensively publishing indictments.”

With Lagos earning about N20 billion from Internally-Generated Revenue (IGR) monthly in addition to federal allocations and other sources, last year’s budget stood at N405 billion.

The government rated the 2009 budget performance at 75 percent.

FELIX Oboagwina
Director of Publicity, Lagos state DPA

Photonews: Again Mayhem In Jos Nigeria

Hundreds of people were reportedly massacred with matchets and other crude weapons allegedly by some fulani herdsmen at Dogo Hawa village in Jos, capital city of Plateau State of Nigeria on sunday, 7th march 2010. This is apparaently a continuation of the mayhem that have been occuring in the city for sometime now. This incidence have since been confirmed by the Plateau state government.