Paper review: War against militants intensifies
The paper headlines for Monday, August 1, focus on the offensive against militants in the southwest and the budget crisis rocking the House of Representatives.
The Nigerian Air force has intensified aerial operations during the day and the night to dislodge the militants terrorising riverside communities of Ogun and Lagos states.
This was disclosed by the director of information and public relations of the NAF, Group Capt. Ayodele Famuyiwa, to the Punch, on Sunday, July 31.
The Punch newspaper, Monday, August 01, 2016.
Famuyiwa said the NAF was carrying out sustained operations against the vandals to prepare the stage for the ground troops to move in and get rid of the gunmen.
The paper reports that fighter pilots of the NAF bombarded two major camps in the Fatola and Abuja and two other areas.
The aerial attacks have forced the embattled militants to flee their fortress into the mangrove forest and are being monitored by the air force.
Meanwhile, the crisis raging the House of Representatives over the budget padding has continued as sacked House of Representatives appropriations committee chairman, Abdulmumin Jibrin, last night spoke of what he called “institutional corruption” at the National Assembly.
The Nation reports that Jibrin told Channels Television last night that there is institutional corruption at the National Assembly, which we needs to be addressed.
The Nation newspaper, Monday, August 01, 2016.
He said: “The case of the National Assembly today is that there is a trigger and we want to take advantage of the trigger to be able to force reform in the National Assembly. Not only reform in the budget of the National Assembly because people are looking at it from a narrow perspective. This issue is going to lead to a revolution in the National Assembly; a lot of corruption is at National Assembly. I want to use the word trigger.
“I have been part of the institution for five years, I have not been part of any corruption, I have never shared money with members of the National Assembly; we have come to a point that we state our position. The money they alleged that I benefitted from is mere blackmail.
“Of course, I am the chairman of Appropriation, what I did is not only to promote my constituency but Nigeria as a whole.”
Declaring that the padding was “completely off the board” compared to the padding in the previous years, Jubrin said: ”As I explained in the last few days, there were lots of insertions in the 2016 budget from the angle of the National Assembly.”
The Sun reports that Jibrin supported claims by former President Olusegun Obasanjo that the National Assembly was corrupt.
The Sun newspaper, Monday, August 01, 2016.
He said statistics was needed to ascertain the exact figures inserted into the budget.
He said: “The amount inserted was about N284 billion. Technically, it was a movement of money here and there in the budget. For five years, working on budgets as chairman Finance, I have never seen this kind of situation. I didn’t know there was some kind of recklessness in the past, but not as bad as this. I saw some kind of insertions into the budget in years past, but in 2016, the insertions completely went off the board.
“Even though the law allows it, personally, I believe that the insertions were too much. It is also very important that the constitution gives us the power to appropriate and insert, but the intention of the constitution is not for you to make senseless insertions. These are the issues that I fought internally. There were a lot of senseless insertions. The fact that we are talking about our own side does not mean there were no problems from the executive. There were issues with the budget team at the budget office and those issues are still there. There were so many tussles between the ministry of finance and the budget office.”
In other news, 31 former governors suspected to have looted the resources of their states are to face criminal prosecution after leaving office.
Vanguard reports that the federal government recently raised a national prosecution team made up of eminent Nigerian lawyers to review all the corruption cases already investigated by anti-graft agencies over the years.
Vanguard newspaper, Monday, August 01, 2016.
The paper states that many of the suspects left office as early as 2003, while the rest ended their tenure and lost immunity from prosecution between 2007 and 2015 but were never questioned by any of the agencies.
Most of them were reportedly investigated by the Justice Mustapha Akanbi-led Independent Corrupt Practices and other offices Commission, ICPC, while others were probed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.
On the economy, Guardian reports that Nigerians will, from today, struggle harder for foreign exchange as banks are also looking for it, especially the United States dollar, to scale up their loan provisions.
Guardian newspaper, Monday, August 01, 2016.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) gave August 5, 2016, as the deadline for all Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) to increase their provisioning for foreign currency-denominated loans and related exposures.
The paper states that an increased loan provisioning for banks became necessary following a new foreign exchange policy that brought imbalance in earlier provisioning made on the basis of N197/$ official exchange rate.
According to the apex bank, the development was one of the effects of the new foreign exchange guidelines, which liberalised the market. Naira currently exchanges for more than $305 at the interbank in response to forex trade liberalisation.
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