Nigeria says cash for arms seized in South Africa was 'legitimate' business transaction

President G.E. Jonathan

CC Global News

ABUJA - Nigeria said on Wednesday that $15 million that had been seized by South African authorities in two separate incidents was money for 'legitimate' arms deals, and it urged its rival African power to release the funds.

South Africa froze $5.7 million worth of funds that it had been alerted to as suspicious by Standard Bank, money which was purportedly to buy arms including 50 M-75 cannons and 200,000 rounds of ammunition.

The move followed the seizure last month of $9.3 million in cash from a private jet carrying two Nigerians and an Israeli.

Nigeria, which says it needs the arms to fight an Islamist insurgency raging in the northeast, said both payments were intended for deals between private companies procuring weapons for Nigerian forces.

South Africa's National Prosecutor said in a statement on Tuesday that the latest seizure covered armaments considered 'controlled items', and the deal was being conducted without relevant permits.

The office of Nigeria's National Security Advisor (NSA) Sambo Dasuki, the country's highest security authority, rejected the charge, the latest in a long run of diplomatic spats between Africa's two biggest economies that has soured relations.

"We want to state clearly that a business transaction actually took place between a legitimate company in Nigeria and another legitimate one in South Africa through the bank," NSA spokesman Karounwi Adekunle said in a statement.

He said that the company had not been able to obtain the arms and so tried to refund the money.

South Africa has named the company as Cerberus Risk Solutions. It was not immediately possible to obtain comment from the firm.

The row comes as South Africa and Nigeria are also at loggerheads over the death of 115 South Africans last month in the collapse of a guesthouse attached to a Nigerian church owned by televangelist TB Joshua on Sept 12.

South Africa says Nigeria has refused access to the bodies of the deceased for DNA testing or burial ever since the tragedy, a charge the Nigerians have not responded to.

Source: Reuters

2015 Mercedes-Benz S-Class S600 - Exterior and Interior Walkaround

CC Autodetail

Impressive through and through. German technology, excellence and perfection at its absolute best.

Hopefully, it was not assembled in Alabama. Just kidding.....

Mercedes-Benz S 500 Intelligent Self Driving Car

CC Autoview

On first impression, a great concept brought to reality. But then again, in light of our human antecedents, the hurdles and challenges from several standpoints (legal, technointel continuum etc) remain.....

Patrick Kluivert on shortlist for Ghana coaching job

Patrick Kluivert

CC Global Sports

While Nigeria continues to bask in the mediocrity of Stephen Keshi's tenure as coach of the Super Eagles, the Black Stars of Ghana continue to attract marquee names for its vacant coaching job.

Dutch legend Patrick Kluivert is on the Ghana Football Association's (GFA) five-man shortlist to be the new coach.

The Black Stars have been without a coach since Kwesi Appiah left in September.

The other candidates are ex-Chelsea boss Avram Grant, former Italy midfielder Marco Tardelli, Swiss Michel Pont and Spaniard Juan Ignacio Jimenez.

"Pont, Kluivert and Tardelli will be interviewed in Accra on 17 October, Grant and Jimenez will be interviewed on 18 October," said the GFA.

Former Ajax and Barcelona striker Kluivert, who scored 40 goals for his country in 79 appearances, left his post as Netherlands assistant coach after the World Cup.

The 38-year-old began his coaching career in 2011 at Dutch side Twente, where he looked after the youth and reserve teams.

A year later he became assistant to Netherlands boss Louis van Gaal and the pair led the team to third place at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

Grant has a wealth of management experience, including a four-year spell in charge of his home country Israel and a year as Chelsea coach.

Italian Tardelli is perhaps most famous for his ecstatic goal celebration in the 1982 World Cup final victory over West Germany. He has since coached, among others, Egypt and was also assistant coach of the Republic of Ireland.

Pont and Jimenez are lesser known names globally. Pont has been Switzerland assistant coach, while the most recent role for Jimenez was coach of Spanish side Valladolid.

The GFA also said two coaches, German Bernd Schuster and Argentine Ricardo Gareca, have been named on standby and will be drafted in the event any of the chosen shortlist is not readily available.

Maxwell Konadu is in charge of the Black Stars in a caretaker capacity and will oversee the team for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers double header against Guinea.

They will play at the Syli Nationale on 11 October in Casablanca, Morocco before hosting the return leg four days later.

Talk about poor taste: New Malaysia Airlines ad asks customers "what they'd like to do before they die....."

CC Cautionary Tale

Malaysia Airlines has provoked a storm of controversy by asking customers to list the things they would most like to do before they die. The airline, which lost two planes this year in disasters that claimed 537 lives, committed the marketing gaffe when it launched a "My Ultimate Bucket List" campaign on Monday.

The campaign called on Australian and New Zealand residents to write their own bucket list and enter it into a competition to win flights to Malaysia and iPads.

But with the world still reeling from the twin catastrophes of the MH370 and MH17 crashes, social media users swiftly began mocking the marketing ploy.

It has since been re-branded around "your ultimate to-do list".

"The competition had earlier been approved as it was themed around a common phrase that is used in both countries," the airline said in a statement.

"The airline appreciates and respects the sentiments of the public and in no way did it intend to offend any parties."

Often associated with the terminally ill, a "bucket list" refers to the places one wants to visit or the experiences one wishes to have before they die.

The aftermath of the twin crashes has reportedly crippled the company financially, with plummeting share prices, near-empty flights and the axing of 6000 jobs fuelling speculation that the company is contemplating filing for bankruptcy.

But the airline described bankruptcy talk as "completely false", saying it would "emerge stronger" after privatisation and restructuring.

Source: Sidney Morning Herald

A pervading culture of gangsterism, lack of accountability and unbecoming arrogance from Aso Rock

President G.E. Jonathan

By The Editor-in-Chief

An adage says that a nation gets the leadership it deserves. In the case of Nigeria, a nation with so much promise, but with so little of it realized thus far, it could not be more apt.

Most neutral observers would however argue that the overwhelming majority of Nigerians are principled, honest and hardworking and thus deserve better.

For over half-a-century since the Federal Republic of Nigeria got its independence from Britain, the country has vacillated between democracy and anarchy, but has somehow managed to steady the ship while still tinkering on the edges of total chaos and ultimate collapse.

When Goodluck Jonathan was sworn-in as Nigeria's 4th democratically-elected President (preceded along those lines by Shehu Shagari, Olusegun Obasanjo and Umar Yar' Adua) and its 14th Head of State, there was so much hope from Nigerians across a divergent spectrum of ethnic nationalities and socio-economic strata.

Unfortunately, three years into Jonathan's reign, the wheels of hope, transparency and progress have essentially fallen off the rickety wagon he (Jonathan) had sold to Nigerians as a sturdy vehicle of purpose, conscience and promise.

There is no questioning the fact that this is the lowest at which Nigeria and the Nigerian psyche have ever been, regardless of the rejigged economic numbers and scattered successes in sports, business as well as the arts and sciences.

While Nigerians are a resourceful and resilient lot, there is a limit to which a people can continually aspire to greatness in all fields of worthy human endeavor with debilitating and spuriously corrupt leadership at the helm.

In Nigeria's over 50 years of existence as a sovereign nation, this President (Jonathan) is without question the most corrupt, inept and repressive the nation has ever been saddled with as a civilian administration, second only to the tyrannical Abacha mal-administration in terms of its repressive and brutish disposition.

Whether it is related to the Boko Haram uprising that has seen a more violent upsurge since Jonathan came into power with over 13,000 Nigerians killed thus far, State Gubernatorial elections, elections into sports associations such as the Nigeria Football Federation, dealing with the opposition or the press, Jonathan's approach has been to misuse organs of State power such as the State Security Service (Secret Police) and Military Intelligence to terrorize and in some cases, silence adversarial voices for good.

Under Jonathan's watch, we have a 'democratically-elected' governor (sponsored and supported by Jonathan's ruling PDP) supervising the physical beating of a judge enshrined with the office of jurisprudence and the legitimate President of the Nigeria Football Federation arrested, humiliated and detained several times by the Secret Police (at the urging of Jonathan's Minister for Sports with obvious orders from Aso Rock), among other innumerable actions that would serve to brand Jonathan as essentially a dictator.

Under Jonathan, the politics of gangsterism has become the daily staple and Nigerians have been the worse for it.

Jonathan must however realize that sooner than later, the winds of corrective recourse and natural retribution will catch up with the perpetrators of injustice and wickedness.

The sooner he pauses to think for a moment with a view to changing course onto a road less traveled but much travailed by men and women of purpose and wise conviction, the better for his diminishing legacy and the future of Nigeria as a corporate entity.

The last thing Jonathan would want to be a signature on his legacy, I believe, is that he was the man that led Nigeria into the abyss of anarchy..... one the nation may never recover from and may ultimately lead to the disintegration of that great nation.

Jonathan is probably at his very core a 'good' man (although prone to parochial and inordinate tendencies), but he is surrounded by ravenous wolves and charlatans.

It is imperative that he acquires the much needed wisdom to change course while time (though preciously little) is still on his and Nigeria's side.

Jonathan's address to the 69th UN General Assembly

CC Videorama

Again, one would have expected a more definitive and directed speech from the leader of the number one economy in Africa and the most populous black nation on earth.

When one considers how the UN has increasingly become the "fifth estate" (an organ of neo-colonialism), Jonathan should have asserted the non-negotiable independence and right to self-determination of the African continent and a renewed commitment to transparent and purposeful leadership.

Nigeria needs a strong and visionary leader that understands the importance of Nigeria to the African continent and the furthering of the agenda of meaningful development for the continent.

His speech (below) was not only lacking in specifics, but lacked conviction as well.

U.S. officials headed to Nigeria to learn how it contained Ebola using 'contact tracing'

Nigerian Health Minister - Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu

The Christian Science Monitor - When Ebola reached Nigeria, health officials were worried about the populous country's ability to control the virus – particularly in Lagos, the nation’s coastal mega-city and transport hub. 
But this week, teams of American health officials are Lagos-bound to learn from Nigeria's experience in defying expectations and stopping the outbreak before it could wreak havoc. 
Since July 20, the day Nigeria’s so-called “Patient Zero” arrived in Lagos, officials have recorded a total of only 19 cases, with no new cases since Aug. 31. Last week, on the same day the US confirmed its first case of Ebola, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) proclaimed that Nigeria had stopped its outbreak. 
Meanwhile, Sierra Leone, one of three West African countries hard hit by Ebola, recorded 81 new cases in the past 24 hours.
"Because of a rapid public health response, effectively tracking nearly 900 contacts, it appears they have] been able to stop the outbreak in Nigeria,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said Sunday. “Though we can't give the all clear yet, it does look like the outbreak is over there. I'm confident that wherever we apply the fundamental principles of infection control in public health, we can stop Ebola."
Nigeria’s success appears to be rooted in "contact tracing" – determining every single person that Patrick Sawyer, or Patient Zero, had contact with, and then monitoring them for signs of the virus.
 “Contact tracing can stop the Ebola outbreak in its tracks,” a chart distributed by the CDC declares. 
Now contact tracers are at work in the US, setting out to track down as many as 100 people who may have been exposed to Thomas Duncan, who traveled from Liberia to Dallas, where he was eventually diagnosed with the virus, The New York Times reports. 
It is an immense task. The Washington Post outlines how it went in Nigeria:

From that single patient came a list of 281 people, [Gavin MacGregor-Skinner, who helped with the Ebola response in Nigeria] said. Every one of those individuals had to provide health authorities twice-a-day updates about their well-being, often through methods like text-messaging. Anyone who didn't feel well or failed to respond was checked on, either through a neighborhood network or health workers. ...In the end, contact tracers — trained professionals and volunteers — conducted 18,500 face-to-face visits to assess potential symptoms, according to the CDC, and the list of contacts throughout the country grew to 894. Two months later, Nigeria ended up with a total of 20 confirmed or probable cases and eight deaths. 

 Ethiopia, one of two countries recognized by the World Health Organization as prepared for a possible Ebola outbreak, also has a vigorous tracing process that applies to every visitor from West Africa.

Obama urges UN to act faster to curb Ebola outbreak

U.S. President Barack Obama (AFP PHOTO/Saul Loeb)

CC News

President Barack Obama said the world is making progress in fighting the Ebola outbreak, but far more needs to be done by every nation. 

“This is progress, and it is encouraging, but we need to be honest with ourselves, it’s not enough,” Obama said speaking at the United Nations High Level Meeting on Ebola Thursday. “There’s still a significant gap between where we are and where we need to be.”

The deadly Ebola virus has spread through Africa, and some American doctors doing mission work also got the disease.

“We know from experience that the response to an outbreak of this magnitude needs to be both fast and sustained – like a marathon, but run at the pace of a sprint,” the president continued. “That’s only possible if every nation and every organization does its part. And everybody here has to do more.”

Obama explained how the world responds could make the difference in how many thousands will die.

“The outbreak at this point, more people will die,” Obama said. “But slope of the curve depends on how fast we can arrest it, how quickly we can contain it, if we move fast, even if imperfectly, that can mean the difference in 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 or 100,000 lives. This is not a time for wrangling and people waiting see who’s doing what first.”

Obama repeatedly asserted that combatting the spread of Ebola is a major national security priority for the United States, but sternly told delegations from around the world gathered in New York, “Do not stand by and think that because of what we’ve done it’s taken care of. It’s not.”

Obama said that the United States is training thousands of health workers from around the world to deal with Ebola in Africa, distributing supplies and information kits hundreds of thousands of families to help them protect themselves and building new treatment units in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. He added that the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response to bring the world body’s humanitarian resources to fight the epidemic.

Back in Washington on Friday, Obama will host 44 nations for a meeting on global health security to be ready for not only Ebola, but the next potential health crisis as well, he said.

“Thousands of men, women and children have died,” Obama told the UN. “Thousands more are infected. If unchecked, this epidemic could kill hundreds of thousands of people in the coming months. Hundreds of thousands.”

Atiku declares for Nigerian Presidency in 2015 elections

Former Nigerian Vice-President Atiku Abubakar

By John Alechenu and Ade Adesomoju

A former Vice-President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has formally declared his intention to contest the 2015 Presidential election on the platform of the All Progressives Congress.

Abubakar, at a ceremony held at the Yar'Adua Centre in Abuja on Wednesday, explained that his desire to become President was born out of the need to give back to the nation.

Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha and the Publisher of Leadership, Sam Nda-Isaiah, had also declared interest in the APC presidential ticket.

A former Head of State and National Leader of the APC, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.); Edo State Governor, Adams Oshiomhole, and Governor of Kano State, Rabiu Kwankwaso, have been reported to also have interest in the ticket.

A confident Abubakar told his supporters during the ceremony that he had the capacity to bring people together and turn things around for the better in the country.

He pointed out that the glaring mismatch between "our potential and our achievements provides a golden opportunity" for him to lead Nigerians to rekindle their innovative instinct and turn the Nigerian dream into a reality.

He explained that in spite of many challenges faced by Nigerians, they had refused to give up on the country.

The former Vice-President said the 2015 elections were about Nigerian youths and the nation's future.

He stressed that the nation, under the current administration, had failed to provide the required environment for the youth to reach their full potential.

The former vice-president said, "It is inspiring that despite difficulties and growing anxiety over the future of our country, our people have refused to succumb to despair and hopelessness.

"This never-say-die attitude gives me immense hope and it is one of the reasons why I can never give up on Nigeria."

Reacting to the agitation for generational shift, he said his generation owed younger Nigerians the responsibility of offering its political shoulders to them to climb upon.

This, he said, was necessary to improve their vision and expand their horizon.

He noted that it was this trans-generational collaboration and partnership that represented the best model to create the future that the nation desired and deserved.

Nigeria, he said, should never again be subjected to leadership experimentation or learning on the job.

He recalled that the Olusegun Obasanjo administration which he was a part of successfully reformed some critical sectors of the economy such as telecommunications and the capital market.

Abubakar said, "As Vice-President from 1999 to 2007, I worked closely with my boss, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, who is a passionate defender of Nigerian unity.

"We focused on macro-economic stability and transforming critical areas such as banking, insurance, oil and gas, telecommunications, pension and the civil service.

"We created institutions that should lay the foundation for good governance and accountability such as the Bureau of Public Procurement, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, SERVICOM, whose golden rule is 'Serve others as you would like to be served.' Sadly, most of these institutions are now mere shadows of themselves."

He said the Obasanjo administration was able to deliver because it had vision, commitment and dedication.

The former Vice-President expressed sadness that rather than pay down the nation's debts, "our borrowing has been on the increase even at a time the price of oil has consistently been above $100 per barrel since the inception of the Goodluck Jonathan administration.''

He argued that resentment, disillusionment and hopelessness were the factors on which insecurity and disharmony thrived.

Nigeria, he said, was more divided today than at any other time since the civil war, adding that there was a disturbing rise in ethnic nationalism and religious bigotry because "we have a governance deficit."

The aspirant said, "Our country seems to be on auto pilot with no one in charge. Nigeria now more than ever before, needs a strong, dynamic, decisive, competent and visionary leadership that can halt the current drift of the ship of state. Corruption needs to be fought, jobs need to be created, our infrastructure needs to be rebuilt, social services need to be provided and insecurity needs to be tackled in a decisive, robust and multi-pronged way."

While commending the leadership of the APC for adopting the modified open primaries in selecting its flag bearers at all levels, Abubakar said the party remained the most potent political force to end years of PDP's dominance of the political space.

The leader of the National Assembly caucus of the APC, Senator George Akume, who spoke on behalf of other party leaders at the event, said the APC has within its ranks, the men and women who have what it takes to rebuild Nigeria.