The Goodluck Jonathan Jobless Social Media Activists Do Not Know. Written By Reuben Abati

"They" in this piece refers to all the cynics, the pestle-wielding critics, the unrelenting, self-appointed activists, the idle and idling, twittering, collective children of anger, the distracted crowd of Facebook addicts, the BBM-pinging soap opera gossips of Nigeria, who seem to be in competition among themselves to pull down President Goodluck Jonathan. This army of sponsored and self-appointed anarchists is so diverse; many of them don't even know why or how they should attack the President.

The clear danger to public affairs commentary is that we have a lot of unintelligent people repeating stupid clichés and too many intelligent persons wasting their talents lending relevance to thoughtless conclusions. Hold on. I don't want to be misunderstood.

I am not saying nobody should criticize the Nigerian President. I spent some time learning that legal maxim: "volenti non fit injuria". Public position comes with its own share of risks and exposure. But the twittering, pinging, Facebook crowd of the new age must be guided by facts.

Hold your stone. Don't haul it yet. Shhh. Wait, Mr. Alaseju! I have spent the last fourteen months working with President Jonathan. I have followed him everywhere. I can write a whole book on his Presidency so far, but you won't get to read that until much later. I have heard that some people are protesting that they will not buy the book if it gets written.

Well, your choice. What I can report, for now is that he is a grossly misunderstood President. Too many people are unfair to him.

They criticize him out of ignorance. They abuse him out of mischief. And the opposition doesn't make things easy at all. Can we look at a number of issues?

You say he is a clueless President. You are wrong. He is not clueless. Nobody is more committed to the Nigerian Project than President Jonathan. In spite of unforeseen challenges which his administration has had to contend with, President Jonathan is doing his utmost best to positively transform Nigeria.

Ordinary Nigerians know and appreciate this. Those parading themselves as leaders of the opposition who claim that the President has lost the support of Nigerians represent only themselves and their selfish interests.

President Jonathan is a clever, methodical and intelligent man, who is very adept at wrong footing all the persons who make an effort to second-guess or under-estimate him. He understands the complexity of Nigeria. He is acutely conscious of the historicity of his emergence as Nigeria's No. 1.

He knows that he is here as the leader of all Nigerians. He knows that he is a representative of all common persons, particularly the children of all blue collar workers who never wore shoes or got a chance to eat three-square meals, and whose mothers and aunties could never be part of policy-making processes.

When he spoke about not wearing shoes as a child, he meant that as a metaphor for the disparities in the Nigerian system, and the urgent need to redress inequalities. But I have heard some persons responding literally that Nigerians should never vote for a man who never wore shoes.

How simplistic. Attention needs to be drawn to the fact that a rooted, people-sourced President who seeks to transform Nigeria, and who campaigns on a platform of transformation, will necessarily be opposed by those who consider themselves the children of Empire builders, those who think that their ancestors built Nigeria. Wrong.

The Ijaws, the fourth largest ethnic nationality in Nigeria, have as much right to have their son as President as every other Nigerian group. But Jonathan doesn't even dwell on this. I have never heard him utter an ethnic statement. He sees himself as the President of all Nigerians.

He is at home with every group. He is focused on the challenges of nation-building. He wants to transform Nigeria. He wants to unite the country. He is determined to promote the country. And he is doing so already. He knows Nigerians want regular power supply. He is working at it. That is why we have crossed 4, 400 MW.

He knows Nigerians want infrastructure. That is why he is telling Bi-Courtney to fix Lagos-Ibadan Expressway or get out. That is why he is telling a particular Minister to fix the East-West road and get it fixed quickly. That is why he has directed the relevant agencies to get corrupt persons to answer for their misdeeds. That is why he is strengthening Nigeria's foreign relations.

That is why he is transforming the agriculture sector, from a contract-awarding, fertilizer distribution enterprise into big business. And more... The reason President Jonathan does not go into a song and dance routine is because he knows that true rebranding of a nation is a projection of positive things that are already happening.

They say he is "tribalistic". Not true. How many Ijaws are in President Jonathan's inner circle? Very few, I can tell you. There are of course, all kinds of persons who go about telling people that they have the President's ears and eyes. They would even tell you that they think for the President! I used to have nightmares whenever I heard that, but it no longer bothers me. I have since learnt that some Nigerians consider it fashionable to wear false garments.

The Presidency qua Presidency is staffed by key officials from all parts of the country. The Secretary to the Government of the Federation is from Ebonyi State.

The Chief of Staff and the Head of the President's Secretariat are both from Edo, the Protocol Liaison Officer and Principal Private Secretary are from Adamawa, the Chief Detail is from Borno, the Aide De Camp (ADC) is from Kogi, the Perm Sec, State House is from Benue, the State Chief of Protocol is from Kwara, the Special Adviser, Media and Publicity is from Ogun, the Chief Physician to the President is from Rivers. Only the Chief Security Officer, the Special Assistant, Domestic and the Special Adviser, Research and Strategy are from Bayelsa.

When he is in the office, and he gets there early every day, and works till very late, he is exposed to all categories of Nigerians.

He runs a modern and open Presidency. He is on Facebook, Twitter, email, SMS, BB, and he reads. And he writes. This is not a provincial President. The intelligentsia, his immediate community, should support him to do his work.

They say Mr. President drinks. My friend and colleague, Etim Etim, called the other day to say that whatever may be the challenges on this job, he could affirm that I am at least enjoying. "What with all the choice drinks on every trip," he said. I told him, "No, we don't drink." He protested. He thought I was lying.

He had heard that kain-kain is a staple fare on presidential flights. I told him No. We are not allowed to touch alcohol. Alcohol is not served during official duties. Yes, when there is an international function, wine is served, but nobody gets drunk around here.

That will amount to an act of indiscipline. The President himself does not allow alcohol to be served at his table. But when you go to social media they tell you something else. Lies. Lies. Lies.

Let me end by saying that the President is a simple man but simplicity is not naivety. If simplicity were to be naivety then the world would not be where it is today because it is simple men like Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Kwame Nkrumah, who have shaped the world that we live in by simplifying what others have complicated.

Dr. Abati is Special Adviser (Media and Publicity) to President Jonathan.

Lamido Sanusi's #5KNAIRANOTE A Reflection of Nigeria’s Reckless Spending Culture

United Kingdom: ONLY time you are likely to set eyes on single £50 Notes is when you have Nigerian visitors,they pull it out like its 'nothing' . I always stand in awe to see the way Nigerians who visit the UK spend money with abandon recklessness, it then should not come as a surprise that Central Bank Governor Lamido Sanusi Lamido is introducing Five Thousand Naira Notes into the Nigerian economy.

#5KNAIRANOTE is going to be exclusive preserve of the super rich in an economy where you can go to bed a pauper and suddenly become a multimillionaire with just ONE CONTRACT.

It is no wonder a lot of hard working Diaspora based Nigerians run back home to get a piece of the cake. Sanusi Lamido spent millions on advertisement 'educating' Nigerians on the importance of a "CASHLESS" economy and yet he is converting 20 Naira notes into coins and introducing 5K Naira notes. It is coming few years after we changed our currency. Sometime you just pray for the OIL to dry up or the so called 'owners of the oil' to be allowed to SEAL IT UP.

The abundant revenue and countless free money that comes out of oil is what is keeping Nigeria together and account for public office holders being able to role out silly policies without looking at the implication on the poor in the society. What a shame.

Dokubo-Asari $9 million a year! Tompolo $22.9 million-a-year! AK47 IS REWARDING IN #NIGERIA

(Culled from Wall Street Journal)

Alhaji Dokubo-Asari once stalked the mangrove-choked creeks of the Niger Delta, a leaf stuck to his forehead for good luck, as a crew that he ran bled oil from pipelines and sold it to smugglers. "Asari fuel," they called it.

Last year, Nigeria's state oil company began paying him $9 million a year, by Mr. Dokubo-Asari's account, to pay his 4,000 former foot soldiers to protect the pipelines they once attacked.

He shrugs off the unusual turn of events. "I don't see anything wrong with it," said the thickly built former gunman, lounging in a house gown at his home here in Nigeria's capital.

Nigeria is shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars a year to maintain an uneasy calm in the oil-rich delta, where attacks ranging from theft to bombings to kidnappings pummeled oil production three years ago, to as low as 500,000 barrels on some days. Now production is back up to 2.6 million barrels daily of low-sulfur crude of the sort favored by U.S. refineries, which get nearly 9% of their supply here.

The gilded pacification campaign is offered up by the government as a success story. But others say the program, including a 2009 amnesty, has sent young men in Nigeria's turbulent delta a different message: that militancy promises more rewards than risks.

Violence in the Niger Delta

Militants in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta began a campaign of kidnappings and pipeline bombings in the early 2000s, upset over pollution and the region's endemic poverty. After a government-sponsored amnesty program in 2009, violence dropped and production went back up. But oil theft, a lucrative criminal industry, has drawn many militants new and old back into the delta's winding creeks.

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While richly remunerated former kingpins profess to have left the oil-theft business, many former militant foot soldiers who are paid less or not at all by the amnesty, and have few job prospects, continue to pursue prosperity by tapping pipelines.

Now, oil theft appears to be on the rise again. Royal Dutch Shell RDSB.LN -1.24%PLC's Nigerian unit estimates that more than 150,000 barrels of oil are stolen from Nigerian pipelines daily. That is one of the lower estimates. In May, theft from one pipeline got so bad that Shell simply shut it down.

"Everybody seems to believe…that the Niger Delta problem is over," said a former government mediator, Dimieari Von Kemedi. "It's just on pause. The challenge is to move from pause to stop."

Meanwhile, Nigeria is facing a separate militancy, in the form of the radical Islamic group Boko Haram, whose guerrilla attacks on churches and police stations in a different part of the country have left hundreds dead. Some legislators have proposed extending amnesty to Boko Haram, as well.

It is an expensive proposition. This year alone, Nigeria will spend about $450 million on its amnesty program, according to the government's 2012 budget, more than what it spends to deliver basic education to children.

Under the arrangement, the government grants living allowances to tens of thousands of former members of the bandit crews and sends them to vocational classes, in sites ranging from Houston to London to Seoul. These costs are on top of millions of dollars paid at the outset to the crews' leaders for handing in their weapons.

For a few, the program has meant spectacular rewards. To improve ties with former delta warlords, the government invited the top "generals," as they call themselves, for extended stays on the uppermost, executive floors of Abuja's Hilton hotel.

The Nigerian state oil company, according to one of its senior officials, is giving $3.8 million a year apiece to two former rebel leaders, Gen. Ebikabowei "Boyloaf" Victor Ben and Gen. Ateke Tom, to have their men guard delta pipelines they used to attack. Another general, Government "Tompolo" Ekpumopolo, maintains a $22.9 million-a-year contract to do the same, the official said.

A liaison to Mr. Tom declined to comment on the contracts. Mr. Ekpumopolo didn't return phone calls and messages. Mr. Ben, when reached for comment, asked, "How much money is involved in this interview?" and then hung up.

Later, he sent an enigmatic text: "Very wel dn im nt dispose bt cnsider 100%al u wnt ,we need investors in niger delta absolute peace is guarante."

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Reuters

Ex-militant Alhaji Dokubo-Asari, who was granted bail in 2007, supported Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan in 2012.

For President Goodluck Jonathan, a Niger Delta native, such lavish expenditures have become a political liability. Despite a growing economy, his country of 167 million struggles to finance even the basics, starting with power plants, roads and sewers. A blossoming middle class in Nigeria's cities has put further strain on public infrastructure.

Yet because four-fifths of government revenue flows from the oil fields, aides to the president defend the high cost of peace by saying the treasury would face an even worse drain if a full-blown militancy in the delta flared up again. "If it's too huge, what are the alternatives?" said Oronto Douglas, a senior adviser to Mr. Jonathan.

"For you to address the whole issue of poverty and development, you need some kind of peace," added Mutiu Sunmonu, managing director for Shell's Nigerian unit. "That is what I think the amnesty program has offered."

Enticed by the program, the militants emerged a couple of years ago from the oil-soaked swamps of the delta. Some of the leaders took up residence in the executive floors of Abuja's Hilton and through much of 2010 and early 2011 spent weeks or months enjoying the Executive Lounge's complimentary supply of Hennessey V.S.O.P. cognac, priced at $51 a shot on the room-service menu. Over a buffet of fiery Nigerian dishes—gumbos, Jollof rice pilafs, goat stews—they rubbed shoulders with the country's leading politicians and influence peddlers, who often live in the floor's $700-a-night art-deco rooms.

"These are young men who came out of the creeks and were given the opportunity to hang out with the crème de la crème, wearing gold watches and drinking from gold-rimmed teacups," said Tony Uranta, a member of the government's Niger Delta Technical Committee advisory group and a frequent Hilton executive-floor guest. "It's a natural thing."

Most have since moved out of the hotel. "It's too high-profile," said an aide to one ex-warlord, Mr. Tom.

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AFP/Getty Images

A man stirred the Niger Delta's polluted water.

Meanwhile, thousands of former militant foot soldiers have been given job training, a feature of the program that officials call its most indisputable success. The question is how many will be able to make use of this training. In Nigeria, the government estimates, there are 67 million other people waiting to be employed.

Kempare Ebipade says he spent six years guarding creekside armories as an oil militant, in the course of which he took two bullets to the thigh. In 2009 he accepted amnesty and was sent to the U.S. for two weeks at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta. He displayed a booklet of Dr. King's speeches from which he said he sometimes reads to villagers.

Mr. Ebipade is a skilled welder now, trained in the craft by the amnesty program. But the father of four struggles to imagine how he will find clients for a welding workshop he has set up, or how he will continue to afford his apartment's rent of $1,100 a year.

The government has vigorously pushed oil companies to hire locals. Mr. Ebipade says that out of the former militant army of 10,000 he belonged to, he has heard of only five that landed jobs with oil companies.

Shell's Mr. Sunmonu warned against the idea "that every trained ex-militant is going to get a paid employment, because if you just look at the number, it's probably huge. So we therefore must broaden our solutions to focus more on self-employment: small enterprises, medium enterprises."

The Niger Delta has seen promising economic progress. Construction on a regional highway is under way.

Nigeria's overall economy is projected to grow at a brisk 7.1% this year. But much of the growth is in cities far from the delta, and a population boom reduces the degree to which the growth helps with the unemployment problem.

In the delta, years-old electric towers punctuate village skylines, but many don't carry electricity, having never been connected to the overtaxed power grid. Children travel to scattered schools aboard canoes, navigating creeks coated by the rainbow stains of oil slicks. A United Nations office has estimated it would take 30 years to clean the waters, which once sustained fisheries.

Amid this landscape, oil-related crime lures locals like Atu Thompson, father of 18 and self-described oil thief, who says he and others see few other ways to provide. "You can take me to amnesty, give me a good contract—but others are still there," Mr. Thompson says.

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AFP/Getty Images

Another ex-oil militant, Ateke Tom, turned in weapons as he accepted an amnesty in 2009.

Mr. Dokubo-Asari, 48 years old, used to be prominent among them. While not all of his account of life in the mangrove swamps could be verified, he long was one of Nigeria's best-known oil marauders.

About 25 years ago, Mr. Dokubo-Asari left overcrowded university classrooms, he says, to study guerrilla warfare in the Libya led by Col. Moammar Gadhafi. He says he was given $100,000 to stir up trouble back in Nigeria, an oil competitor to Libya.

Fomenting conflict proved easy in the restive Niger Delta he returned to in the early 1990s. From a local governor, Mr. Dokubo-Asari says, he procured weapons and money to build a militia that ultimately was several thousand strong. For years, as he tells it, they broke open pipelines, filling canisters with crude oil and refining some of it through timeworn techniques used by locals to boil palm-tree sap into wine.

The government struggled to lure him out of the mangroves. Mr. Dokubo-Asari responded to one amnesty offer that he considered meager by announcing a death threat against petroleum workers. Shell evacuated hundreds of expatriates and oil derricks briefly slowed to a stop. The next day, oil prices hit $50 a barrel for the first time.

Nigeria's government offered Mr. Dokubo-Asari a truce and $1,000 apiece, he says, for his AK-47 rifles, numbering 3,182. He says he took the deal and used the profits to purchase more weapons and return to the swamp.

There, he recounts he was finally arrested and coerced into another round of negotiations. Fearing assassination, he fled to Cotonou, Benin, where he says he founded a school for Niger Delta children. He showed a video of him teaching kids kung fu at the school.

New warlords quickly took Mr. Dokubo-Asari's place. Marauding under noms de guerre like Gen. Shoot-at-Sight, Gen. Africa and Gen. Young Shall Grow, they formed a loose confederation of gunmen calling itself the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, and crippled enough oil infrastructure to bring Nigeria's production on some days to a near-halt.

Enlarge Image

Reuters

Makeshift refineries run by oil bandits, such as this one near Port Harcourt, worsen the Niger Delta's pollution.

That was when Nigeria announced the 2009 amnesty. In televised ceremonies, guerrillas dropped off rifles, machine guns, tear-gas canisters, dynamite bundles, rocket launchers, antiaircraft guns, gunboats and grenades to be sold to the government, which also offered the nonviolence training courses and nine-month vocational classes.

Theft fell sharply. Yet now, just as Nigeria's state oil company has begun institutionalizing pipeline-watch jobs for some ex-militants, theft has blossomed again. "It's quite an escalation. If nothing is done, it will continue to increase because more and more people will just come to feel that this is a gold field," said Shell's Mr. Sunmonu. "We're not going to give up on this and run away from it. We believe it can be stopped."

Maclean Imomotimi left an overpacked university four years ago, the muscular 30-year-old says, to rob barges in the Niger Delta swamps. Now, befitting his new career, he is known as Gen. Imomotimi.

He says he accepted the government's amnesty offer in 2011 on the expectation he would be feted, his hotel bills and bar tabs paid; instead, he was disappointed to receive a living allowance of just 65,000 naira ($413) a month.

So Gen. Imomotimi has returned to the waterways, this time, he says, not to rob barges but to steal oil.

"I take amnesty's money—what [little] they give me—I take it and I buy other guns," he says. "There's much, much more money in the creeks."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304019404577420160886588518.html

Our Cynthia, Kidnapped and Murdered in Lagos! Will they let her rest in peace? Written By Aishatu Ene Ella

In the last few days I have seen had my heart torn, stripped and broken in pieces first by the disappearance and death of my Dearest friend and secondly by the wickedness exhibited by Nigerians, passing judgment on someone they never knew or met. 

Cynthia

When She was officially declared missing, we put up a number online so people with information can call and help out, off over 500 calls we received in 3 days, only 2 of those calls were from people who actually helped with information, One was my Dear friend Nuhu Kwajafa, The other was the Area Commander who called to inform us of the arrest of the people. The others were heartbreaking to say this least, I wondered how her mother would have coped if she had to deal with silliness, pettiness and undeserved hate from strangers, who just took one look at a lady and decided to judge her based on her looks.

When The sad news of her death broke, I made a comment and said I hope " all those who have insisted she was with a man would have their answer now and let her rest in peace" how wrong I was, They wouldn’t rest, they would only go back and manufacture a more hurtful and painful story, formulate more rumors and pass it around as facts, hmmm it is well. I have no comments for hateful people, I just want to share with you the real Cynthia, and the Cynthia we knew not the one who hateful people have created in the last few days.

Cynthia was born on 10th of November 1987 to Gen Frank and Joy- Rita Nkem Osokogu, Udoka as her Mother named her, even as a baby was a uniting factor in her family. Her Mother had 3 boys before her; she was the last baby and only girl.

Her Parents had settled in Jos where we were and still neighbors, We became friends because in those days there were only few houses in the area. I was the last child and so didn’t have a lot of playmates my age, her brothers were my mates and Cynthia as the only girl didn’t have much friends around the neighborhood either so she tagged along when we had our "adventures" and "yawo".

Cynthia the Model and Business Woman

2004 was one of the hardest years for the Family I was raised with in Jos, Cynthia and her Mom was with me all the way. They were there to comfort, assist, cook etc.

She was a tall beautiful and slender girl, we always teased her because even at 13 she was taller than me and the same height with her brothers, she was a tomboy all the way. Determined, stubborn and focused. As she grew into her height Her Mum and I playful suggest she try modeling because of her structure, Cynthia took it seriously, even though her major focus was education she gave modeling a trial and did quiet well as a model. In 2007, she got her first major run way job and I will never forget the day she called me from Lagos after she had been paid, she said she wouldn’t want to waste the money and would buy clothes and bring to school to sell. The first badge of clothes never made it to keffi as industrious Cynthia who staying with her brother during her visit at Air force Quarters sold the clothes to her brother, his colleagues and their friends, she told me she made 3 times her capital and immediately re-invested, bought more stock, came to Keffi and rented a shop, that was the birth of her Baby: "Dresscode". 

I remember I bought her the forms to one of the national competitions some years ago, she passed the screening passed 2 stages and called me one day to say she was asked to compromise to get through the next round, I told her to withdraw and she left. That was in 2011S. She never entered any major pageant after that
When it came to business Cynthia was midas, she knew when to make a great sale, she was never at a loss, her business grew from strength to strength all this while she was not even 21, @ 21 a lot of the people who now make it a point to formulate such hateful rumors were still struggling to buy Jamb Results.

Cynthia the Sister and Daughter:

Cynthia was like the baby sister I didnt have, She was my confidant, stylist and a great comfort. We shared a lot, tears, smiles, laughs, joys ,sorrows and was always at my service. She was greatly involved in charity, anytime I sent a text or posted a picture of someone needing medical support, I could count on Cynthia as one of the first respondents.  When she was in Abuja, she would always come and volunteer, run errands, always with a smile. When I get to Jos, she will be at the motor park waiting, Thats if she doesnt pick me up from Abuja. Not to forget my person Stylist, she either bought or chose most of my clothes, most times my friend say "you look nice" i tell them "ask Cynthia oh, I have no idea what I am wearing". Style has never been a strong point of mine, but if Cynthia bought it or asked me to buy it I knew it was good and stylish
To her Mother, Cynthia was her heart. Several times i will ask Cynthia please dont go to Jos it is volatile and she will reply me " Mumsy is alone at home", or when she is in Jos and there was a fight I would call and ask her to leave Jos and come and stay a few days with me, she will say "I cant leave Mumsy alone here now" . That was our Cynthia, Others first.

When it was time to serve, while others would work their service to areas full of opportunity like Abuja, Lagos and Porthacort, Cynthia worked her service to crisis ridden Jos to be close to her Mother, Is that what a "runs girl" does?

At age 24, Cynthia had a successful business, and was running a Post Graduate Program in Public Administration, sadly people will ignore all that and choose to believe that because she is pretty and Young she must be a "Runsgirl", how sad, we Judge people by our own low and shabby standards.

She earned every kobo she had by good old hard work, Lets even forget her Father supported her financially but that didn’t turn her to a spoilt brat she was as determined as ever to make her own mark and earn her own keep.

The world and people who have no standards can stand afar and Judge all they want but we know who you are and we love you, we don’t need to defend You My baby, just setting the records straight.

The security Situation in our country now is horrible at best, people are kidnapped, robbed and killed everyday, why is it so hard to believe that a young girl was killed while going to pursue her legitimate business? If It was a man who was killed would we have come up with all these stories? If it was an older woman or someone not so attractive would we still? Her crime is being, young, pretty and a business woman. Hmmm, People, Have the decency to let us mourn in peace Please

Aishatu Ene Ella