The office of the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) of the U.S. Embassy has donated equipment valued over $325,000 to the Nigerian Police. The equipment will aid in counter-insurgency operations in the northeast and restore civilian authority in areas affected by the Boko Haram insurgency.

INL Director James Jewett presented the equipment to the Commissioner of Police Akeera Yunus Mohammed, who represented the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu at the function. The equipment will be transferred to the Mobile Patrol Division of the Nigeria Police Force officers assigned to Borno State.

For the 500 officers of the Mobile Police Force currently serving in the state, INL provided bulletproof protective vests and bulletproof helmets, goggles, and 20 ballistic shields. A tent, mosquito nets, first aid boxes, heavy-duty flashlights, foldable mattresses and other hygiene products were also provided. By providing these supplies and equipment, INL is complimenting prior USAID investments in Borno State through the Office of Transition Initiatives.

Director Jewett stated, “We are proud to stand with Nigerian law enforcement on the front line of maintaining peace and security. This donation will improve the health and security of those brave men and women committed to providing law and order.”

By U.S. Mission Nigeria

As part of continued efforts to improve the quality of teaching and learning outcomes in public and private schools, the Lagos State Government has released the year 2020-2023 Approved Booklist for Public and Private Schools across the State.

An official statement signed by the Honourable Commissioner for Education, Mrs. Folasade Adefisayo, stated that since books play a very significant role in the acquisition of quality education and are also indispensable tools to teachers and students, concerted efforts were made by the Ministry to ensure the release of a unified booklist for all classes.

Mrs. Adefisayo added that the proliferation of books in the education sector made it essential to scrutinise and select value-adding textbooks that would be circulated in schools across the State, in order to eliminate those that are substandard in content and unsuitable for the students’ consumption.

The Commissioner averred that the Ministry, through its Curriculum Services Department, conducts review of books triennially (every three years) during an exercise tagged “Major Book Review”, through appraisal of textbooks submitted by publishers and authors.

In her words: “Through a highly competitive and transparent process, hundreds of vastly experienced teachers are drawn from both public and reputable private schools to read and rate the books submitted using a set of rating scales to determine the ones that meet the prescribed standards”.

While stressing that only content-rich textbooks and those written in line with the National Curriculum and Lagos State Unified Schemes of Work are selected to make the booklist, she declared that the practice is to engender the inculcation of 21st century skills in the learners.

Speaking on the distribution process, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Mrs. Abosede Adelaja, implored administrators of public and private schools to visit the Curriculum Services Department of the Ministry to pick up the Approved Booklist for all classes (Pre-Primary, Primary, Junior and Senior Secondary) and work with the specified books for uniformity and purpose to enhance the learning process of students.

Adelaja reiterated the commitment of Lagos State towards ensuring that no child is left behind while high teaching and learning standards are achieved through the State education and technology agenda.

The Lagos State Government has condemned the alleged brutalisation of a journalist, Benjamin Anaja, with Guild Press Limited by some operatives of the Kick Against Indiscipline (KAI) at Meiran Bus Stop, along the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway.

A statement signed by the State Commissioner for the Environment and Water Resources, Mr. Tunji Bello, said the present administration has a zero-tolerance for any form of brutalisation of members of the public by any employee, operative or agent of the State government.

He stated that the incident will be thoroughly investigated and punitive measures will be taken against any of the KAI operatives mentioned in the viral news report if found culpable, reiterating that the complainant would be invited to substantiate his claim and possibly identify the culprits who attacked him, despite identifying himself as a journalist.

The Commissioner, however, apologised to the victim, the management of the Guild publishing company and the Nigerian Union of Journalists, promising that the State government is determined to fish out the perpetrators of the dastardly act.

Bello said the administration of Governor Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu believes in a free and unfettered media, which is a basic requirement for a better and egalitarian society.

Recall that a news story had gone viral on Wednesday evening alleging that some operatives of KAI dislodged street traders at Meiran Bus Stop on Lagos Abeokuta Expressway and accosted a journalist who was recording the event.

According to the post, the journalist claimed to have produced his identity card but was, nevertheless, dragged into their vehicle, brutalised, detained for several hours and had his identity card seized before he was eventually released at Ikeja along Bus Stop.

A Federal High Court, Abuja has given the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, the nod to arrest Mr. Richard Laing, Managing Director, ExxonMobil Nigeria.

Justice Okon Abang on Friday January 29, 2021 granted the Commission’s application for a Bench Warrant to arrest the managing director of the international oil company.

The EFCC approached the Court for a Warrant after three invitations to Mr. Liang were rebuffed.

The Commission is investigating alleged procurement fraud in the Major Integrity Pipelines Project involving Mobile Producing Nigeria as the contracting company, Suffolk Petroleum Services Limited as the main contractor, Saipem Contracting Nigeria, Global Offshore Limited and Van Ord as sub-contractor to SPSL.

At issue, is the fraudulent creation of Change Orders worth over $213million USD.

The Federal Government has said Nigeria’s low rating in the 2020 Transparency International Corruption Perception Index (TI-CPI) does not truly reflect the great strides by the country in its fight against corruption.

In a statement issued in Abuja on Sunday, the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, assured that the country’s anti-corruption agenda, which has placed great emphasis on corruption prevention measures and the building of integrity systems, remains on course.

The Minister said the implementation of the various reforms, especially in the Ease of Doing Business, is expected to yield positive outcomes in the country’s corruption perception and other relevant assessments in the next 12 to 24 months.

”For instance, following the release of the 2019 TI-Corruption Perception Index, the government initiated reforms to improve on Nigeria’s Ease of Doing Business indices. This is because we found that up to 40% of the country’s corruption perception survey indices relates to business processes and general public service delivery processes. Government’s swift action has led to major reforms in the processes at our ports and business process points,” he said.

Alhaji Mohammed said in addition to placing more emphasis on corruption prevention measures and building of integrity systems, high profile corruption cases are currently under investigation and prosecution.

He said the emphasis on preventive mechanisms is in response to various local and international reviews and evaluation that Nigeria has gone through, including those from the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) and even from the TI-CPI

”In response to these evaluations, a number of significant policies have been instituted to enhance transparency and accountability, and prevent corruption. Even in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of key transparency and accountability policies were developed and are currently being implemented,” the Minister said.

He listed such policies as including the launch, by the ICPC, of the National Ethics Policy which addresses integrity issues on all sectors of the polity and is directly linked to a key pillar of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACS), which is Ethical Reorientation; efforts by the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) to energize the Code of
Conduct for Public Officers (CCPO) and the launch of the Nigerian Port Process Manual (NPPM), which is ultimately aimed at sustaining the country’s improvement in the Ease of Doing business.

”While we expect the results from these reforms to speak for us in due course, we are also taking measures to improve our data collection and retrieval on these issues to reduce the current under-reporting of our ongoing corruption reduction measures,” Alhaji Mohammed said.

He said having analyzed the 2020 TI-CPI rating for Nigeria, the Federal Government is interrogating a number of issues and discrepancies that have been observed in the rating process, including some data sources in which Nigeria’s scores have remained flat over the past 10 years, reflecting no improvement, decline or fluctuation.

”This is very improbable given the nature of behaviour of variables, which are normally influenced by a variety of factors (which is the reason they are called ‘variables’). In this case, the corruption scores would have been affected by changes in the size and structure of the public sector over the past 10 years, changes in policies and personnel and systems over the period including, for instance, process automation, etc. There is therefore a need to verify that there is no transposition of figures from year to year due to absence of current
data,” the Minister said

Also, he said, different assessments on the same indicators (for instance corruption in the bureaucracy) by different rating institutions have generated different scores and different rankings across the ranking agencies

”There is a need to understand why these variations occur, and consequently the robustness of the methodology and validity of data,” Alhaji Mohammed said, adding that there are missing assessments for Nigeria in the data entries where the country has performed well in previous CPI calculations, like the African Development Bank Country Policy and Institutional Assessment.

”There is a need to understand why scores for this assessment have not been recorded for Nigeria for the past two years, which has had the effect of reducing Nigeria’s cumulative score and ranking relative to countries with those scores included in their CPI for both years,” he said.

Segun Adeyemi

For spending N2,000,000 erroneously paid into his account a 45-year-old driver, Adetunji Tunde Oluwasegun, has been sentenced to two years imprisonment by a Kwara State High Court.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, zonal office in Ilorin had arraigned the culprit on Monday, January 18, 2021 on one-count charge bordering on stealing.

He was brought before Justice Sikiru Oyinloye. The offence contravenes Section 286 and punishable under Section 287 of the Penal Code.

The charge reads:

“That you, Adetunji Tunde Oluwasegun, sometime between the month of July, 2020 and 21st of August, 2020 at Ilorin, Kwara State, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court dishonestly took the sum of N2,000,000.00 (Two Million Naira), property of Sherifat Omolara Sanni, which she erroneously transferred to your bank account 0008383333 domiciled with Guaranty Trust Bank plc, without her consent and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 286 of the Penal Code and punishable under Section 287 of the same Penal Code”

The defendant pleaded ‘guilty’ to the charge when it was read to him.

Justice Oyinloye found Oluwasegun guilty of the offence and sentenced him to two years imprisonment with a fine of N200, 000 (Two Hundred Thousand Naira).

The judge also ordered the convict to pay his victim the N2 million before he finished serving his jail term.