Haliru Bello emerges acting PDP BoT chairman

A former Minister of Defence, Dr. Haliru Bello, on Monday emerged the acting Chairman, Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party.

Bello, who was also a former acting national chairman of the party, replaces Chief Tony Anenih who resigned from office last week.

The decision to make Bello the acting chairman of the PDP BOT was taken at a meeting held inside the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

He was said to be the only nomination made at the meeting.

The meeting which started at about 9.05pm and presided over by President Goodluck Jonathan had Vice President Namadi Sambo; President of the Senate, David Mark; and his Deputy, Ike Ekweremadu, in attendance.

Other members who were in attendance at the time the meeting started included the BoT secretary, Walide Jubril; Mrs. Josephine Anenih, Dr. Haliru Bello, Prof. Tunde Adeniran, Ibrahim Mantu, Prof. Jerry Gana, and Senator Hope Uzodinma among others.

Although Anenih was sighted at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, venue of the meeting, before it started, he was not inside the hall at the time Jonathan declared it opened.

Credit: The PUNCH

TOOLZ FINALLY ENGAGED BY BOYFRIEND, TUNDE DEMUREN

On Air Personality (OAP), Tolu Oniru, better known as Toolz, has been proposed marriage to by the man she has been dating for a while now, Tunde Demuren.

The young man is the son of a former Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) Director-General, Harold Olusegun Demuren and also an executive at EME Music, which has popular singer, Banky W as an executive too.

The lovers have been on a vacation and Tunde popped up the ‘will you marry me’ question, which the hour glass-shaped Toolz excitedly replied ‘Yes’.

With this, the Beat FM big girl is now off the single market and her fans will be expecting an announcement of their wedding date.

Soldiers take over Capital Oil, load drums with fuel

Officials of the Nigerian Army on Monday took over the Ojodu Berger outlet of Capital Oil, buying petroleum products in drums, after scaring away thousands of consumers.

The armed personnel came in the guise of maintaining peace and order, but they soon abandoned their primary responsibility for fuel racket. They shoved, maltreated and sent away those who were on queue to be attended to, thereby gaining access to have their drums loaded with fuel.

As of press time, the unregistered white Isuzu truck they use for the ‘deal’ had visited the filling station for the fourth time.

The fourth truck was being loaded as of 8:50pm.

The vehicle, on each visit, left with at least 14 drums and dozens of gallons filled with fuel.

The helpless consumers, some of who slept at the filling station, suspected the soldiers were feeding the growing Lagos black market with the product.

The military officials who were fully dressed had taken over the only two pumps that dispensed the Premium Motor Spirit.

Those who protested the act were beaten and given scares on their bodies.

Meanwhile, consumers, who had spent the entire Monday at the filling station without getting the product to buy, had described the announcement by Ifeanyi Uba as a publicity stunt.

By 9pm on Monday, not more than a hundred cars left the station with fuel.

Besides the military, officials of the Nigeria Police Force and black market dealers took over the show while thousands of motorists who had crowded the place since 5am were abandoned.

Credit: The Punch

38 killed as fire guts home for elderly in China

A fire has swept through a nursing home in central Chinese province of Henan killing at least 38 people, officials have said.

The fire broke out on Monday evening in an apartment building at a privately owned home for the elderly in Pingdingshan city, the state news agency Xinhua said on Tuesday.

Two out of the six injured were in critical condition in a hospital, the work safety bureau of the Henan province said in a statement on its website.

Al Jazeera’s Adrian Brown, reporting from Beijing, said that about 44 people were rescued from the blaze.

“But this old people’s home had 168 residents, so by the middle of Tuesday morning it was fair to assume that many of them did not make it,” he added.

He also said that the “ferocious” fire likely occurred while the residents were asleep and would have had almost no chance of escape.

Search and rescue operations were continuing, Xinhua said, and the cause of the fire remained unclear.

Credit: Al Jazeera

$8.8m fraud: Lagos DPP to request Briton extradition

The Lagos State Directorate of Public Prosecutions may soon be filing a request for the extradition of a British citizen, Deepak Khilnani, to face criminal charges in Nigeria.

Khilnani, an Indian-Briton chartered accountant, was said to have, along with one  Dr. Sushil Chandra, duped his Nigerian partner, Green Fuels Limited, to the tune of $8.8m in 2008.

The DPP, last week Thursday, filed a  charge marked ID/1544c/15 before the Lagos State High Court in Ikeja against the suspects.

The charge contains  four counts bordering on conspiracy, cheating, stealing and false representation.

It was learnt that Khilnani had since last year absconded to the United Kingdom after he was granted an administrative bail by the Nigerian police.

In one of the counts, the prosecution alleged that the suspects “fraudulently tricked Green Fuels Limited to pay greater sum for machinery purchased from Gentec Limited than it would have paid for such machinery.”

They were also accused of making false statement to the Corporate Affairs Commission “knowing same to be false, with intent to defraud the shareholders and members of Green Fuels Limited.”

The offences, according to the prosecution, contravened sections 390(6), 421, 422 and 436 of the Criminal Code Law, Cap C17, Vol.2, Laws of Lagos State, 2003.

Khilnani, it was learnt, is an ex-convict in the UK.

A conviction certificate dated November 13, 1998, issued by the  British Crown Court at Blackfriars indicated that Khilnani was jailed for 18 months after being convicted for “trading with intent to defraud creditors, false accounting and making false statement to auditors.”

The UK court document marked T19970811 and signed by J. Jordan stated that Khilnani was disqualified for six years under Section 2, Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986.

He was also ordered by the court to pay the prosecution cost of  £15,000.

Credit: The Punch

You can’t choose Ministers for me, Buhari tells Gov

An early minute brow between President-Elect, General Muhammadu Buhari and governors elected on the platform on the All Progressives Congress may be in the offing as Buhari has asked the governors to steer clear of his ministerial list.

Vanguard gathered that Buhari is contemplating a system operated in the second republic during the era of National Party of Nigeria, NPN, where appointment of ministers was done by the national secretariat of the party and not by the governors.

A source at the National Headquarters of the APC Monday said that Buhari had directed the leadership of the party to pass the message of non interference to the governors.

Credit: Vanguard

Where Jonathan and I disagreed —Amaechi

Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State explained yesterday that the refusal of President Goodluck Jonathan to repay over N105 billion spent by the state government on the repairs of federal roads in the state was the major cause of their disagreement.

Ameachi spoke in Abuja after the presentation of a documentary titled:  Dynamic of Change, which chronicled the achievements of his administration in the last eight years.
He said that even with three days to the expiration of the life of the present regime, the money was yet to be refunded.

He also hinted that his quarrel with President Jonathan escalated following the unnecessary interference of the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, in the affairs of Rivers State.

According to him, his resistance to the unsolicited actions of Mrs. Jonathan whom he accused of unleashing Police, military and other security agencies on the state to achieve her aim, fueled their disagreement.

Amaechi expressed gratitude to God for seeing him through his tenure as the governor of the state despite many efforts to remove him from office.

On his achievements in the state, the governor stated that the projects were executed in an attempt to bequeath people-oriented legacies to the people of the state, adding that he engaged 13, 200 of the 91,000 teachers required to boost education in state.

He, however, hinted that the state’s financial earnings from oil proceeds which used to be N20 billion had reduced to N6 billion due to the dwindling oil prices.

The occasion attracted the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Ghali Umar Na’Abba, his former deputy, Chibudom Nwuche, Senator Magnus Abe and other officials of Rivers State Government.