“Fuel subsidy is not working and will NOT work because of abuse” – FG

The Federal Government on Monday said payment of subsidy on local consumption of petroleum products was not working because it was subject to abuses.

“The system (fuel subsidy) will not work because there is so much room for abuse. Whereever you go outside Lagos and Abuja, fuel is hardly sold for N97 per litre. Civil society organisations are not speaking against this. They only attack the government. Government cannot be at all filling stations,” Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, said in Abuja.

The declaration came barely hours after media reports of a suit in which a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party in Anambra State, Chief Stanley Okeke, is asking a Federal High Court to compel President Goodluck to totally withdraw subsidy on fuel.

Reacting to the Okeke suit, key figures in the civil society on Sunday, as reported by The PUNCH on Monday, described the court action as dubious and diversionary.

The government in January 2012 had a tough time repelling mass unrest coordinated by civil groups in protest against the wholesale removal of subsidy and the consequent jump in the per litre pump price of petrol from N65 to N141.

The government, following a two-week paralysis of the system, later retreated and fixed the price at N97 under a regime of partial subsidy removal.

But Maku, who spoke while briefing the media on the achievements of the Federal Government for 2012, said petrol could hardly be bought at the control price of N97 per litre outside Lagos and the Federal Capital Territory.

The minister said civil society organisations needed to rise up against exploitation by dealers in petroleum products, arguing that the government could not be at every filling station across the country. He said the people needed to ask questions on why they cannot buy fuel at the control price.

Despite the abuses in the system, Maku said the government would retain the subsidy regime because that was what the people wanted.

He said, “Government has paid subsidy for every litre of fuel sold in this country but dealers are selling above the regulated price. We have not deregulated fuel pump prices. For every price above N97 per litre, Nigerians are paying twice.

“People are profiteering from the system and it is wrong. Nigerians should have mercy on Nigerians. We are retaining the subsidy because that is what people want now.”

Okeke in his suit is asking the court to stop Jonathan from further payment of subsidy because the process is fraught with abuses.

The only way to stop abuse of the fuel subsidy scheme is the removal of the policy by the Federal Government, according to the plaintiff in a 27-paragraph affidavit deposed in support of the suit.

But while the spokesman for the Save Nigeria Group, Yinka Odumakin, said the suit was a grand plot to deceive Nigerians, human rights activist and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mr. Femi Falana, vowed that civil society organisations would oppose Okeke and what the suit represented “vehemently”.

A political activist and elder statesman, Dr. Tunji Braithwaite, also described the suit as a “dubious diversion.”

Meanwhile, the Nigeria Labour Congress in its review of the state of the nation in 2012 said the year was “a year of unparalleled impunity” and that fuel subsidy thieves must go to jail.

The NLC, in a New Year message by its National President, Abdulwahed Omar, said the country was characterised by incessant job losses and unemployment, insecurity and corruption. It said that massive poverty in the country failed to tally with the growth rate claimed by the Federal Government.

Omar said, “Government will be unfair to the Nigerian people if it fails to expeditiously prosecute those who have stolen so much, and caused so much trauma and death to the people.

“We hold the view that no one is above the law in any decent society and if our government is committed to the enthronement of good governance and a corrupt-free society, they must get the named beneficiaries of the oil subsidy scam to not only refund all the money they have stolen, but also serve appropriate jail terms.”

The NLC said that revelations at various probes into the downstream sector of the oil industry showed unprecedented and horrendous corruption.

According to the union, the probes revealed “the rabid obsession of the ruling class to make the economy dependent on imported petroleum products was for the purpose of enriching themselves to the detriment of the Nigerian people.”

The NLC commended what it described as the heroic protests of workers and the Nigerian people against fuel subsidy.

It also commended members of National Assembly, particularly the House of Representatives for their positive interventions.

The union lamented the high rate of poverty in the country, adding that increasing number of families had become impoverished.

The NLC said, “Given the disturbing trend in the economy and governance in the past year, which was characterised by incessant job losses and unemployment, insecurity, and corruption, as well as unparalleled impunity, the sustenance of good governance would require re-srategising and more commitment to a peoples-focused and oriented policy thrust in the interest of the Nigerian poor.”
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culled from: Punch

When Lindsey's daughter died, her organs saved FOUR lives. And if the pain grows too great, one remarkable letter lifts her despair Read more: http://jaysenshal.blogspot.com

Just before Christmas, the Mail told the story of 20-year-old Will Pope, who has only weeks to live unless a donor heart is found.

It highlighted the UK’s desperate organ shortage.

Here one mother tells how her young daughter’s decision to be a donor transformed the lives of four people...



I know everyone thinks their children are perfect, but Jessica really was as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside,' said Lindsey Adderson. Jessica was killed in a car crash at the age of 17


At the bottom of Lindsey Adderson’s handbag sits a slightly tattered, beautiful card.

She has carried it around with her ever since she received it — more than four years ago — and whenever she feels that her grief for her daughter is beginning to overwhelm her, she reads it again.

The card is from the mother of a little girl who, at the age of two, received a new liver — donated by Lindsey’s daughter after her tragic death in a car crash.

It reads: ‘Before our daughter Ella received the wonderful gift from your daughter Jessica, Ella had a very poor quality of life. She spent all her time in hospital.

‘But now Ella is able to run around in our garden and jump on her trampoline. From the bottom of our hearts, we cannot thank you enough.’

Because of teenager Jessica’s selflessness in being an organ donor, little Ella, who was suffering from a life-threatening liver condition called neonatal cholestasis, has been given another chance.

Jessica was a talented horse rider. She had ambitions to be a journalist

Lindsey, a 44-year-old housewife from Chesterfield, Derbyshire, says: ‘I’m so grateful that this lady took the time to send me the card. At times I’ve been almost paralysed by grief at losing Jessica.

‘But the knowledge that she has helped Ella and three other people to have a better life is a huge comfort to me.’

Lindsey’s worst nightmare came true one Sunday afternoon in June 2008.

She was at home with her husband Adrian, his son from a previous relationship Jake, 14, and her son Callum, also 14.

Jessica, 17 — a talented horse rider with a string of A and A*GCSEs to her name and ambitions to be a journalist — was due home after a shift at Sainsbury’s, where she was working part-time.

Lindsey recalls: ‘For some reason I was feeling anxious and pacing up and down.

'Jessica was late and hadn’t called me, which was unheard of.

‘Then a number flashed up on my mobile — the local pub where Jessica had previously worked.



'It was very unusual that they should call, and as I answered the phone, a sense of foreboding made it hard for me to breathe.




‘The manager sounded shaken and very, very solemn. She explained there had been a car crash close to the pub and that Jessica was involved.

'I remember asking if Jessica was dead and she hesitated slightly then said no — she was still breathing.

'Right at that moment I knew my precious daughter was going to die, and suddenly I could hear myself screaming.’

Adrian, a contracts manager, drove Lindsey to Chesterfield Royal Hospital, and she subsided into silent shock.

‘We actually drove past the scene of the crash, we stopped and I could see that they were cutting someone out of a car.

'The police told me that Jessica had already gone in an ambulance and I could tell from the number of police cars and people that it was very serious.

'Adrian kept telling me that Jessica would be OK but I knew he was wrong.






‘We arrived at the hospital and were rushed up to the intensive care ward. It was absolutely packed with doctors and nurses looking grave and there was a really sad atmosphere about the place.

‘My mother, auntie and sister were waiting and they were completely distraught. My auntie caught hold of my hand and said, “Pray, Lindsey, pray”. Then a nurse came and ushered us into a side room and told us the dreadful, awful news.’

Jessica was brain-dead — her body was being kept alive by machines.

Lindsey later discovered that as Jessica left the supermarket where she worked she saw her ex-boyfriend waiting for her.

He persuaded her to get into his car, and minutes later, as he drove down a country road, they accidentally collided with another car.

The former boyfriend walked away with minor injuries. The driver of the other car damaged her breastbone and her passenger was severely injured but would survive.

Jessica took the full impact of the crash. The main artery in her leg was severed, her spleen was ruptured and she’d suffered multiple, catastrophic injuries to her head. An inquest would later rule she died from misadventure.

In the hospital, as the doctor was talking to Lindsey, Jessica was bleeding from her irreparable internal injuries. There was no hope she would survive.

Lindsey says: ‘I was taken to see her and she looked so lovely, so peaceful — almost as if she were asleep. She had just a tiny bit of blood on the side of her mouth. It was as if my world was exploding into a million pieces.


‘I know everyone thinks their children are perfect, but Jessica really was as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside.

'She was always thinking about other people and was a wonderful big sister to her brothers.

'Despite the fact she had her pick of boys at her school prom, she saved the last dance for a boy who had learning difficulties.

‘Right there I felt as if I, too, was dying, and I honestly had no idea how I would be able to carry on.’

As Lindsey gazed down at her daughter she was aware of a doctor approaching her.

‘He had tried to save Jessica and he told me how sorry he was. Then he gently asked if Jessica was an organ donor.’

She adds: ‘Suddenly, through the fog, I remembered Jessica just a few weeks earlier sitting at the kitchen table and chatting to me while she cooked dinner.

'She announced out of the blue that she was signing up to be an organ donor. “They can take everything except my eyes,” she said.

‘In that instant I knew I had to abide by her wishes.

'Although legally the wish of the donor overrides the wishes of their family, it’s normal practice for the family’s permission to be sought, and the doctor asked me five times to ensure I understood what the implications were. Then I signed the forms.’

Jessica’s biological father, who was already driving down from Scotland, was not legally responsible for her following his divorce from Lindsey, so it was his ex-wife’s decision — but he immediately agreed with her that this was the right thing to do.

‘The only people who should make that decision are the person themselves and their closest family.’

Instead, Lindsey thinks there should be more education and debate on the issue to inform  people of the facts on organ donation — good and bad.

‘The issue should be part of the school curriculum and discussed on mainstream TV and radio,’ she says.

‘Facts should not be glossed over. That way we could have enough organs without needing to further traumatise grief-stricken families.’

Since Jessica’s death, Lindsey, Adrian and their sons have joined the organ donor register. So have many of their family and friends. 

Lindsey says: ‘Knowing the difference that Jessica has made to so many lives even as she was dying, I truly believe that organ donation is the right thing for me. 

‘But that is my choice. No one else’s.’

Lindsey says: ‘I’d be lying if I said I was thinking about the people her organs would go to.

'What I really wanted was to let Jessica die peacefully — to hold her in my arms as she took her last breath, and to say goodbye and thank her for bringing us so much joy.

‘Instead I was letting her go to an operating theatre to die with strangers, to be cut up and taken apart.

'It went against every instinct I had as a mother, and to be honest I could hardly bear to think about it.

'But in the middle of this dreadful nightmare I knew this was one thing I could still do for Jessica. It was what she wanted.’

While the transplant coordination team ran tests and began an urgent search of the organ waiting list to find matches, Jessica was ventilated.

The machine kept her blood circulating, oxygenating her organs to keep them alive.

Throughout the night and the following day, her family stayed by her bedside, saying their goodbyes.

Lindsey recalls: ‘We climbed into bed with her, kissed her, told her how much we loved her.

'I washed her beautiful red hair for the last time.

'Occasionally her hands would twitch and I would get a surge of hope, even though there was absolutely none. The nurses told me this was a reflex action, common in people on ventilation.’

As word of the accident spread, Jessica’s friends began to arrive at the hospital in droves — the nurses letting them in three at a time to say goodbye.

‘They queued all day along the corridors,’ remembers Lindsey.

Early on Tuesday, the transplant team told Lindsey they’d found a match for Jessica’s liver, pancreas and kidneys.

‘I knew she’d be treated as any other patient and given a general anaesthetic while her organs were removed,’ she says.

‘But as I watched her being wheeled through the double doors towards the operating theatre I thought my heart would pump out of my chest.

‘I knew then for certain that my daughter would never come back to me.

'Later that day, when I came back and cuddled Jessica, her body was ice-cold.

'She looked very pale and her throat had been stitched. She was gone.’

Half of Jessica’s liver went to little Ella, and a kidney and her pancreas were transplanted into a 43-year-old married man who had insulin dependent diabetes — he is now said to be making excellent progress.

The other kidney transformed the life of a mother-of-two who had polycystic kidney disease, and the other half of her liver went to a 59-year-old man with non- alcoholic liver disease.

Lindsey says: ‘The knowledge that Jessica has helped so many people makes me feel almost elated at times. I don’t know how I would have coped otherwise.’

Every day three people die in Britain while waiting for an organ transplant.

There are growing calls for an opt-out system of donation, in which everyone is automatically registered to be an donor unless they formally opt out.

But despite the comfort Lindsey takes from the lives saved by her daughter’s act of kindness, she is opposed to such a system.

‘Donating organs to a stranger should be an incredibly selfless, sacrificial and thought-through gift, discussed with family and friends so everyone knows about it.

‘I can tell you from personal experience that donating an organ of a loved one is an incredibly traumatic thing to do.

'To take the choice away from someone, to force them to agree to it when they are in the midst of their grief, would be incredibly cruel.

‘The only people who should make that decision are the person themselves and their closest family.’

Instead, Lindsey thinks there should be more education and debate on the issue to inform people of the facts on organ donation — good and bad.

‘The issue should be part of the school curriculum and discussed on mainstream TV and radio,’ she says.

‘Facts should not be glossed over. That way we could have enough organs without needing to further traumatise grief-stricken families.’

Since Jessica’s death, Lindsey, Adrian and their sons have joined the organ donor register. So have many of their family and friends.

Lindsey says: ‘Knowing the difference that Jessica has made to so many lives even as she was dying, I truly believe that organ donation is the right thing for me.

‘But that is my choice. No one else’s.’


http://jaysenshal.blogspot.com


culled from: dailymail

UN names Jose Ramos-Horta envoy to G.Bissau

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has tapped Jose Ramos-Horta, a former East Timor president and Nobel Peace Prize winner, as his new special representative to coup-stricken Guinea-Bissau.

The man who helped bring independence to East Timor will also head up the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office (UNIOGBIS) in Guinea-Bissau.

He replaces Rwandan diplomat Joseph Mutaboba, whose term in the troubled west African nation ends on January 31.

Ramos-Horta, 63, “brings with him more than three decades of a diplomatic and political career in the service of peace and stability in Timor-Leste and beyond,” a UN statement said.

Mutaboba, appointed in 2009, left the country in early December. Guinea-Bissau demanded he be replaced, accusing Mutaboba of favoring the government that lost power in an April coup that interrupted a presidential election.

An interim civilian administration plans to hold elections in 2013. Guinea-Bissau has suffered chronic instability due to conflict between the army and state since independence from Portugal in 1974.

Ramos-Horta, an exiled voice for East Timor during two decades of often brutal Indonesian occupation, advocated clemency for Indonesians accused of atrocities as well as renegade troops who tried to assassinate him in 2008.

He has since been active on international peace initiatives.

Ramos-Horta shared the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize with East Timorese Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo.

He was nominated to the UN post just as the UN ends its peacekeeping mission in East Timor on Monday — after 13 years in Asia’s youngest nation following a bloody transition to independence.

Obama, Republicans reach deal on fiscal cliff

Obama: deal with GOP on fiscal cliff

The White House and top Republicans struck a deal late Monday to avert huge New Year tax hikes and spending cuts known as the “fiscal cliff” that had threatened to send the US economy into recession.

The pact, if agreed by Congress, would hand President Barack Obama a victory by hiking tax rates on the wealthy — those earning over $450,000 a year — but exempt everyone else who had been due to see their taxes go up on January 1.

It would also put off $109 billion in budget cuts across the government for two months, but would in the process line up another showdown between Obama’s Democrats and Republicans in dysfunctional Washington at the end of February.

Vice President Joe Biden, who negotiated the deal with the top Republican in the Senate Mitch McConnell, was on Capitol Hill to sell it to Democratic senators, some of whom wanted tax hikes to kick in at a lower threshold.

Had no deal been struck, budget experts warned that the fragile US economy could have been sent spinning back into recession by the $500 billion combined whack from spending cuts and tax hikes.

In the end, the deal was clinched just a few hours before a midnight deadline. A Senate vote was possible overnight, while the House of Representatives was not due back into session until Tuesday.

World stock markets, expected to be thrown into turmoil by a failure to beat the deadline, are closed for New Year’s Day, so lawmakers have a few extra hours of breathing room to get the deal concluded.

The deal means a return to Bill Clinton-era tax rates for top earners to 39.6 percent, starting for those who make $450,000 a year and above.

Obama had originally campaigned for tax hikes to kick in for those making $250,000 and above.

The president said earlier that the deal would extend tax credits for clean energy firms and also unemployment insurance for two million people that had been due to expire.

It was also expected to include an end to a temporary two percent cut to payroll taxes for Social Security retirement savings and Medicare health care programs for seniors and changes to inheritance and investment taxes.

A source familiar with the deal said that the two-month delay to spending cuts — known as the sequester — was financed by increased revenues and spending cuts from defense and non-defense spending.

Both Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had signed off on the deal, the source said.

Now it remains for Republican House Speaker John Boehner to rally his restive and difficult to control conservative coalition around the agreement.

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Senate Passes Legislation to Allow Taxes on Affluent to Rise

Add caption

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. arrived for a closed-door meeting with Senate Democrats on Monday evening.

WASHINGTON – The Senate, in a pre-dawn vote two hours after the deadline passed to avert automatic tax increases, overwhelmingly approved legislation Tuesday that would allow tax rates to rise only on affluent Americans while temporarily suspending sweeping, across-the-board spending cuts.

The deal, worked out in furious negotiations between Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, passed 89-8, with just three Democrats and five Republicans voting no. Although it lost the support of some of the Senate’s most conservative members, the broad coalition that pushed the accord across the finish line could portend swift House passage as early as New Year’s Day.

Quick passage before the markets reopen Wednesday would likely negate any economic damage from Tuesday’s breach of the so-called “fiscal cliff” and largely spare the nation’s economy from the one-two punch of large tax increases and across-the-board military and domestic spending cuts in the New Year.

“This shouldn’t be the model for how to do things around here,” Senator McConnell said just after 1:30 a.m. “But I think we can say we’ve done some good for the country.”

“You surely shouldn’t predict how the House is going to vote,” Mr. Biden said late New Year’s Eve after meeting with leery Senate Democrats to sell the accord. “But I feel very, very good.”

The eight senators who voted no included Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida and a potential presidential candidate in 2016, two of the Senate’s most ardent small-government Republicans, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, and Senator Charles E. Grassley, who as a former Finance Committee chairman helped secure passage of the Bush-era tax cuts, then opposed making almost all of them permanent on Tuesday. Two moderate Democrats, Tom Carper of Delaware and Michael Bennet of Colorado, also voted no, as did the liberal Democrat Tom Harkin, who said the White House had given away too much in the compromise. Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama, also voted no.

The House Speaker, John A. Boehner, and the Republican House leadership said the House would “honor its commitment to consider the Senate agreement.” But, they added, “decisions about whether the House will seek to accept or promptly amend the measure will not be made until House members – and the American people – have been able to review the legislation.”

Even with that cautious assessment, Republican House aides said a vote Tuesday is possible.



Under the agreement, tax rates would jump to 39.6 percent from 35 percent for individual incomes over $400,000 and couples over $450,000, while tax deductions and credits would start phasing out on incomes as low as $250,000, a clear victory for President Obama, who ran for re-election vowing to impose taxes on the wealthy.

“Just last month Republicans in Congress said they would never agree to raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans,” Mr. Obama said before the vote at a hastily arranged news briefing Monday, with middle-income onlookers cheering behind him. “Obviously, the agreement that’s currently being discussed would raise those rates and raise them permanently.”

Democrats also secured a full year’s extension of unemployment insurance without strings attached and without offsetting spending cuts, a $30 billion cost. But the two-percentage point cut to the payroll tax that the president secured in late 2010 lapsed at midnight and will not be renewed.

In one final piece of the puzzle, negotiators agreed to put off $110 billion in across-the-board cuts to military and domestic programs for two months while broader deficit reduction talks continue. Those cuts begin to go into force on Wednesday, and that deadline, too, might be missed before Congress approves the legislation.

To secure votes, Mr. Reid also told Democrats the legislation would cancel a pending congressional pay raise — putting opponents in the politically difficult position of supporting a raise — - and extend an expiring dairy policy that would have seen the price of milk double in some parts of the country.

The nature of the deal ensured that the running war between the White House and Congressional Republicans on spending and taxes would continue at least until the spring. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner formally notified Congress that the government reached its statutory borrowing limit on New Year’s Eve. Through some creative accounting tricks, the Treasury Department can put off action for perhaps two months, but Congress must act to keep the government from defaulting just when the “pause” on pending cuts is up. Then in late March, a law financing the government expires.



And the new deal does nothing to address the big issues that Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner hoped to deal with in their failed “grand bargain” talks two weeks ago: booming entitlement spending and a tax code so complex that few defend it anymore.



Though the tentative deal had a chance of success if put to a vote, it landed with a thud on Capitol Hill. Republicans accused the White House of “moving the goal posts” by demanding still more tax increases to help shut off across-the-board spending cuts beyond the two-month pause. Democrats were incredulous that the president had ultimately agreed to around $600 billion in new tax revenue over 10 years when even Mr. Boehner had promised $800 billion. But the White House said it had also won concessions on unemployment insurance and the inheritance tax among other wins.

Still, Democrats openly worried that if Mr. Obama could not drive a harder bargain when he holds most of the cards, he will give up still more Democratic priorities in the coming weeks, when hard deadlines will raise the prospects of a government default first, then a government shutdown. In both instances, conservative Republicans are more willing to breach the deadlines than in this case, when conservatives cringed at the prospects of huge tax increases.

“I just don’t think Obama’s negotiated very well,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa.

With the legislation now headed to the House, Republicans there signaled that enough of them, in combination with Democrats, could most likely pass the legislation, just weeks after Republicans shot down Mr. Boehner’s proposal to raise taxes only on incomes over $1 million.

“I don’t want to say where I am until I read the legislation, but it is certainly better than the alternative,” said Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania.

With the threat of huge cuts agonizingly close, official Washington was prepared for the worst. The Defense Department prepared to notify all 800,000 of its civilian employees that some of them could be forced into unpaid leave without a deal on military cuts. The Internal Revenue Service issued guidance to employers to increase withholding from paychecks beginning Tuesday to match new tax rates at every income level.

“No deal is the worse deal,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, rejecting the assertions of liberal colleagues that no deal would be better than what they would see as a bad deal.

Despite grumbling amongh Republicans and Democrats, it was clear that a deal hashed out through intense talks between Mr. Biden and Mr.McConnell had given both sides provisions to cheer and to jeer.

Under the deal, tax rates on dividends and capital gains would also rise, to 20 percent from 15 percent, on income over $400,000 for single people and $450,000 for couples. The deal would reinstate provisions to tax law, ended by the Bush tax cuts of 2001, that phase out personal exemptions and deductions for the affluent. Those phaseouts, under the agreement, would begin at $250,000 for single people and $300,000 for couples.

The estate tax would also rise, but considerably less than Democrats had wanted. The value of estates over $5 million would be taxed at 40 percent, up from 35 percent. Democrats had wanted a 45 percent rate on inheritances over $3.5 million.

Under the deal, the new rates on income, investment and inheritances would be permanent, as would a provision to stop the alternative minimum tax from hitting middle-class families.

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culled from: nytimes

Jigawa Assembly backs Lamido for presidency

THE Jigawa State House of Assembly Monday openly declared its full support for Governor Sule Lamido to contest the Presidency in 2015.

The Speaker, Alhaji Adamu Ahmad Sarawa, who made the statement yesterday after accepting the governor’s budget presentation, said it has became imperative for them to support the quest considering the pressure on the governor from all parts of the country.

He said: “We heard the comments of former and present political leaders and traditional rulers praying for Allah to make him the next president come 2015. May Allah accept their prayers and we in the Jigawa State House of Assembly are 100 per cent in support of this call by prominent Nigerians.”

The Speaker enumerated about eight awards the governor had received in recent times from different organisations to include Best Governor Award 2009 by the International Association of Small Scale Industries, and Best Governor Award 2010 in Infrastructure Development by the Federal Ministry of Transport, among others.

He said if the opposition would call them rubber-stamps for saying what was obvious and visible, it would not deter them. He added: “At this point, I want to make it clear that whether such people like it or not, honour must be given to whom it is due and Sule Lamido is not only a talk of the state but the nation and world over.”

He further assured that the state assembly would expedite action on the passage of the budget, adding that budgets since the Lamido administration have been plain, clear and elaborate.

“This house will ensure a speedy scrutiny, deliberations and passage of the 2013 Appropriation Bill to enable our great government swing into action,” he added.

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New Year Message: Mr President preaches peace

President Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday called on Nigerians to unite in building a peaceful and prosperous nation. The president also called for more support for his administration towards realising its goal of transforming the country.
The president in his New Year message said, “let us all therefore resolve as we celebrate the New Year to place the higher interests of national unity, peace, stability and progress above all other considerations and work harder in our particular fields of human endeavour to contribute more significantly to the attainment of our collective aspirations.”

He said his administration will continue to ignore cynics that see nothing good in government saying, “I also want to assure Nigerians that we will refuse to be discouraged by those who have taken it upon themselves to pick on every initiative and effort of this administration.”

President Jonathan urged Nigerians to render support to government in its effort at developing the country.

He said security will remain the major focus of his administration by 2013 saying, “we will also do more in 2013 to further empower our security agencies who are working in collaborative partnerships with our friends in the international community to stem the scourge of terrorism in our country and enhance the security of lives and property in all parts of Nigeria.”

He said priority will also be placed on flood and erosion control as well as the rehabilitation and expansion of existing federal roads, improved power supply and reactivation of the national rail network.

The president said government will work towards actualising its programmes and policies as captured in the transformation agenda.

The president also promised to create employment opportunities for the teaming graduates and to create wealth for the people.

He said, “We have in the last year achieved a lot in terms of the positive transformation of vital sectors of our national life such as public infrastructure, power supply, oil and gas, transportation, education, health and agricultural development.

“We will continue to work diligently in 2013 to ensure that our efforts in these areas are carried forward to full fruition in fulfilment of our promise of better public services and improved living conditions for all Nigerians.”

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