Power Minister Says Tariff Hike Will Attract Investment

The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, says the new electrify tariff is the first major decision that will attract needed investment in the sector, according to Channel TV.

Fashola’s comment in Lagos on Monday came just as the Nigeria Labour Congress the Trade Union Congress and their allies held nationwide protest against the tariff hike of 45 per cent.

“The question on the lips of everybody is; why can’t we have power first before we pay?

“I wish we could do that, but if they understood that power business is funded from finance from banks. So, no bank is going to lend money to you if you can’t show a recovery price.

“That is the reason we can’t have power first before tariff. It has to be produced before we have it and it has to be paid for.

“The supplier of gas is not going to supply unless he sees his cash,” the Minister explained.

On the protest by the unions, Mr Fashola urged them not to start a new fight, saying “we don’t need one”.

“In any event, there are part of the employee of all these DISCOs and GENCOs that are still working, so let’s get to productivity. Let’s stop fighting (and) let’s produce.”

On the level of electricity supply which the unions are insisting must improve before a new tariff is issued, the Minister said that the capacity Nigeria had in January had never been reached before.

“In the last week of January, we recorded all time high generation of 5,000mw. Nigeria has never reached that level of generation (and) we need a lot more.

“But even with that 5,000mw, there is a lot of service work that needs to go on so that people can access the power.

“So not paying for power, you are disrupting the system; diverting lines, you are disrupting the system; vandalising pipes, you are disrupting the system, you are cheating the system, it is part of anti-corruption (and) everybody must pay for what he uses.

After a meeting with operators in the power sector, the Minister also inspected a transmission facility under construction.

He urged the contractor to expedite action so that incremental supply could be experienced.

Oil prices up slightly after sharp sell-off

Oil prices rose in Asia on Tuesday after a three-day sell-off that saw the US benchmark sink back below $30 a barrel, but analysts said the supply glut and world economic weakness would keep a lid on the commodity.

The pick-up in the two contracts comes despite a rout across Asian equity markets fuelled by renewed worries about the global outlook.

Traders had sent oil prices plunging Monday as talks between Saudi Arabia and Venezuela on bringing stability to the market came to nothing.

There had been hopes the Saudis would support calling a meeting of the OPEC producers’ group — of which it is the key member — but it was unwilling to do so.

OPEC has refused to cut output as it tries to maintain market share in the face of competition from US shale.

US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for March delivery sank 3.9 percent to $29.69 and Brent shed 3.5 percent to $32.88 Monday.

On Tuesday WTI was up 31 cents, or 1.0 percent, at $30.00 and Brent gained two cents, or 0.1 percent, to $32.90, a day before the US releases official data on its reserves which are at their highest levels since 1930.

Crude prices have crashed more than 70 percent since mid-2014, hit by a perfect storm of overproduction, oversupply, weak demand, a slowing global economy and a strong dollar.

Added to that is the imminent arrival of Iranian output onto world markets after international sanctions linked to its nuclear programme were lifted.

“It’s a particularly volatile and difficult time for oil,” Ric Spooner, a chief analyst at CMC Markets in Sydney, told Bloomberg News.

The market would continue to experience oversupply for the next few months, Spooner said. “We have Iran back on, there’s been no significant cut in US production and inventories are high, which means the downside pressure is there.”

With The Guardian

Casey Anthony opens West Palm Beach photography business

Casey Anthony has opened a photography business roughly five years after she was acquitted for murder in her daughter's death, records revealed Monday.

Anthony, 29, filed papers in November effective Jan. 1 to open Case Photography in West Palm Beach, Fla., according to the state Division of Corporations.

                                                             JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES

                                         Casey Anthony leaves custody with her lawyer in 2011.                                      

The Cortez Rd. home listed in the $160 filing belongs to private investigator Patrick McKenna, who acted as her team’s lead private investigator, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

She was cleared in 2011 of murder charges in the death of her 2-year-old daughter Caylee in a case that drew national attention.

                                                                    ANONYMOUS/AP

          Her daughter Caylee's remains were found dead 2008.

McKenna had years earlier found the tapes with Los Angeles police Detective Mark Fuhrman using racist language that discredited him during the O.J. Simpson trial.

Anthony didn’t immediately return requests Monday night for comment on a phone number and email address listed in the filing. McKenna didn’t immediately return a call to his office and declined the Sentinel’s request for an interview outside his home.

We’ll probe Okonjo-Iweala, Diezani soon, says EFCC

                                                                    Ngozi Okonjo Iweala

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission will soon begin the probe of the nation’s oil and gas industry as part of the current anti-corruption war of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration.

The roles of some principal officers in the former Goodluck Jonathan administration, including the former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke; her counterpart in the Ministry of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala; and an oil magnate, will come under intense scrutiny.

The Acting Chairman of the EFCC, Mr. Ibrahim Magu, said this in Abuja when he appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Crimes to defend the commission’s 2016 budget proposals.

In his presentation before the lawmakers on Monday, Magu tactically avoided giving direct answers to questions on whether Alison-Madueke would come under the searchlight of the agency.

The anti-graft agency’s boss merely responded to such questions by saying, “The commission will soon move into the petroleum sector”, but called on the National Assembly to support the efforts of the agency by making more funds available for its operations.

Shortly after the presentation of the EFCC’s chairman, however, a member of the committee, Mr. Razak Atunwa, told reporters that Magu actually informed the committee that Alison-Madueke, Okonjo-Iweala and the oil baron would be investigated.

Atunwa was the lawmaker, who asked Magu the question on whether the commission would probe the oil sector.

Atunwa added, “I said the EFCC has recovered a lot of money for Nigeria and he (Magu) mentioned that in that regard, more sectors of the economy are likely to come under investigative activities.

“I said ‘will it include the petroleum sector’? He said, ‘yes’. And I said ‘would it include investigating the following people – Diezani Alison-Madueke, Okonjo-Iweala and a particular oil magnate’, and he said ‘yes’; those people are already under their investigative radar.”

The PUNCH had, in October last year, reported that Switzerland might extradite the oil marchant to the United Kingdom.

The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland, in an email to the newspaper, had confirmed that the UK had sought for mutual legal assistance from its country.

In an e-mail sent to it, the office of the AGF of Switzerland was asked if it had received extradition request from the UK on the businessman.

It was also asked to specify the time the extradition process would begin and when he would be extradited.

In his response, Nathalie Guth of the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland, said, “I refer to your request of today and we can confirm that the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland has received a request for mutual legal assistance from England in this context.”

Magu told the lawmakers that at a time the commission was stepping up the anti-graft war, the Ministry of Budget and National Planning cut its overheads by over N1bn this year.

He added that while the EFCC proposed N2.9bn as overheads, the ministry slashed it to N1.3bn, a figure, he said, represented a shortfall of N1.6bn, “or 116 per cent.”

He complained that the budget cut would affect the operations of the agency, particularly investigations into corruption allegations.

“The areas that will be adversely affected are investigative activities, manpower development and maintenance of logistics.”

Although he admitted being aware that government’s revenue had dwindled due to a sharp fall in crude oil prices, Magu argued that corruption-fighting was capital-intensive.

He appealed to the committee to consider approving additional N500m for “operational activities as more sectors of the economy may come under investigative activities during the year.”

Magu also spoke of plans by the agency to recruit 750 personnel this year in its bid to build its core members of staff and reduce the number of its operatives on secondment from other organisations.

Ironically, the budget ministry cut the EFCC’s personnel cost for this year by 6.5 per cent.

In 2015, the personnel cost for 2,173 employees was N7.1bn.

But in the 2016 budget, the budget ministry reduced it to N6.6bn, a decrease of “N463.2m.”

The Chairman of the committee, Mr. Kayode Oladele, nonetheless, made promises that the House would look into the complaints of the EFCC.

He said, “As we all know, the current economic downturn has drastically reduced projected earnings for the 2016 fiscal year.

“Despite the paucity of funds, the funding of the EFCC remains a priority for the government.

“The committee shall support the vision of elevating the EFCC to sustain the current anti-corruption crusade.”

With The Punch

Fear grips perm secs, directors over budget-padding probe

Fears have gripped some directors and permanent secretaries in many ministries, departments and agencies of government over revelations by the Presidency that bogus figures were injected into the 2016 budget.

Our correspondent gathered on Monday that many of the top government officials, who had been saddled with the responsibility of preparing the budget in their respective agencies, had become jittery that they could be probed.

Presidency sources had, on Saturday, revealed attempts by a ‘budget mafia’ in the Federal Government’s bureaucracy to scuttle innovations introduced into the budget by inflating figures.

It was learnt that the mafia proposed a budget of N9.7tn for capital spending and overheads, excluding personnel cost, as against the Presidency’s initial total estimate of about N8tn.

The group was said to have proposed N3tn as overheads alone out of the N9.7tn, a figure the Presidency later slashed to N163bn.

The source in the Presidency, who claimed that the mafia was responsible for the controversial provisions in the eventual N6.07tn budget sent to the National Assembly by the Presidency, added, “These bureaucrats also proposed to spend N2.1trn on personnel for the 2016 estimate compared to about N1.8tn in the 2015 budget.”

A director in one of the ministries confided in our correspondent that many of his colleagues were startled about the revelation from the Presidency, stating that heads would roll as a result of the scam.

The director, who described the extent of padding of the budget as mind-blowing, stated that while the issue of padding of budget was not new, the magnitude of figure involved in the current scam was huge.

The source said, “What we read in the news about the padding of the budget by some civil servants who the Presidency referred to as constituting a ‘budget mafia’ is very alarming.

“It tells you the extent of the rot we have in the civil service. But I think this time the civil service is in for a serious trouble because the body language of the President is that of zero tolerance for corruption.

“Everyone in the civil service knows that this government is out to fight corruption and from the recent revelation, the level of fear and anxiety in the civil service, particularly those at the peak of their careers, has been heightened.”

Meanwhile, it was gathered also on Monday that the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udo Udoma, would on Tuesday (today) appear before the National Assembly to defend the ministry’s budget and that of its parastatals for the 2016 fiscal year.

Top officials in the ministry confided in our correspondent that the minister would appear alongside Hajiya Zainab Ahmed, the minister of state, the Permanent Secretary, Mrs. Fatimah Mede, and other top directors in the ministry.

In the 2016 budget, the ministry has a total allocation of N7.89bn for recurrent (non-debt) expenditure with a capital vote of N3.19bn for capital, giving a total allocation of N11.08bn.

Udoma and his officials in the ministry would be facing the lawmakers for the first time since Saturday when the claims of budget padding was made.

The National Assembly had on Sunday called on President Muhammadu Buhari to institute a high-powered panel to investigate the alleged padding of the 2016 budget by some top civil servants.

The House of Representatives said top civil servants responsible for the padding should be prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission.

The Senate, on its part, had said besides probing the padding, Udoma should also be sanctioned.

The senators argued that civil servants could not have perpetrated the embarrassing act alone without the connivance and collaboration of the Budget Office, supervised by Udoma.

Speaking through the Chairman, House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Mr. Abdulrazak Namdas, in Abuja, the House expressed happiness that it was the Presidency that discovered the alleged fraud.

Namdas recalled that in the past, the National Assembly was easily blamed for such malpractices “even where the legislature knew nothing about them.”

He added that having admitted that it had identified the culprits, the Presidency should immediately commence the process of prosecuting them.

Attempts to get the comments of the Ministry of Budget and National Planning on the issue of budget padding raised by Buhari were not successful.

Calls and a text message sent to the mobile phone of the Director, Information in the ministry, Mr. Charles Dafe, were not replied as of 6.30pm when this report was filed.

With The Punch