Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Dilapidated state of Federal Government College, Port Harcourt
Ben Bruce Tackles Governors Over Minimum Wage
Senator Ben Bruce representing Bayelsa East Senatorial District has faulted the calls by some state governors to reduce the minimum wage of N18,000 downward.
He advised state governors against contemplating with the move which according to him is unjustifiable.
The senator in a series of tweets noted that reducing the amount which can barely take care of any family in the country is an invitation of crime and corruption among workers, Vanguard reports.
Bruce said: “A worker with a family earns less than a member of the NYSC who earns ₦19,800. Reducing his pay is unconscionable! A man earning ₦18k struggles to pay rent, feed family & pay school fees. To reduce his pay is to punish his family. If FG & state govts dont pay workers well they invite workers to steal. To end corruption we must pay workers well.”
State governors under the auspice of Nigeria Governors’ Forum at their meeting reportedly complained about the minimum wage of N18, 000 stating that they cannot longer paid due to dwindling economy fortune of the country following the free fall oil in the global market.
In a related development, Governor Adams Oshiohmole of Edo state had stated that the N18, 000 minimum wages must be paid against all the odds, thereby disagreeing with other governors, who were skeptical about it taking to consideration the present economic situation in Nigeria.
He added that the minimum was in force since the tenure of the previous administration wondering why his colleagues were calling for its reduction.
Hazard Has Disclosed Talks With Mourinho
The main Chelsea’s disappointment of this season, Eden Hazard, has disclosed the conversation with Blues manager, Jose Mourinho.
Last season the 24-year-old scored 19 goals in 52 appearances ah was named Player of the Year (PFA).
This season he has only one goal in 12 matches.
The Belgian said: “We spoke together before the Stoke game. I said to him: “Maybe we have to try something, to change something. Maybe I have to play a No.10 because we have to try.” We did and I played a very good game in the League Cup in Stoke. And, [against Norwich], it was the same.I tried to play my own game. I didn’t start the season well. I know that. I gave everything in training and on the pitch when I played. Now I hope I can get a lot more form and try to help the team win games.”
According to the rumours, Hazard could move to Real Madrid due to a poor relationship with Jose Mourinho.
However, the player stresses: “I don’t have a problem with Mourinho. I’ve heard a lot of things about this, but no. Everything is good with him. He is the best manager.”
Bode George Advises Biafra Agitators, FG
Chief Bode George, a former deputy national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has warned that it will be disastrous for Nigeria to experience another civil war citing that no country had ever survived two civil wars.
Nigeria engaged in a civil war from 1967 to 1970 in which millions of lives were lost. In recent times, there has been agitation for an independent Biafra state by some Igbos championed under the aegis of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra and the Indigenous People of Biafra.
The Punch reports that the PDP chieftain warned against the emergence of another war at an event to celebrate his 70th birthday in Lagos on Monday, November 23.
George advised the federal government and the pro-Biafra agitators to tread softly as secession was not the answer to the problem the country was facing.
He also advised the government to make an even distribution of resources and appointment so as to give every tribe a sense of belonging.
“I want to plead with the Biafran protesters to be patient and I urge them to tread softly. No nation goes to civil war twice and survives. We are still meandering to build nationhood.
“Let us build this nation together. We must ensure that everyone has a sense of belonging. Sharing of resources and appointments should not be a winner-takes-all affair. Let us debate and deliberate over our affairs. Dismembering the system through protests and agitations is not the solution.”
The PDP chieftain also claimed the party lost the election because some people within the party were empowered by being made ministers when they didn’t deserve it.
Capt. Tunji Shelle (retd.) who is the chairman of the party in Lagos said the party lost because some people absconded with money meant for campaign. He however expressed optimism that they party will do well as an opposition.
“Money went into the wrong hands. The people who should not handle money were the ones who handled money for the PDP. I don’t want to start mentioning names but they know themselves. Some of them cannot even stay in Nigeria today because of the damage they did to the party.
“We will continue to pray that they change their attitude and character. The PDP is a strong party but I know that Chief George has done his best.”
Wayne Rooney Wanted In China
Manchester United forward Wayne Rooney is wanted to become the face of Chinese football, The Sun reports.
Despite the striker has three years on his contract at Old Trafford, the source claims the cash-rich Super League is keen to bring him to the Far East, after a massive TV deal injected funds into the league.
The Sun states that Rooney has reportedly been identified as the superstar China needs to give their competition a worldwide profile.
Rooney has scored seven goals in 18 appearances this season.
Inside the 'Ant Trade' - how Europe's terrorists get their guns
Weapons black market is served by army of underworld foot soldiers who smuggle arsenals in bit by bit
When they first pulled him over for a routine check on the Bavarian Autobahn, police saw little unusual about the middle-aged motorist in the rented VW Golf.
Aged 51 and from Montenegro, he told police he was on off on holiday to Paris, and was looking forward to climbing the Eiffel Tower.
Only when officers searched his car under a new procedure to check for illegal migrants did they discover there seemed rather more to his itinerary than sightseeing.
For stashed in hidden compartments was a terrifying arsenal of weapons, including several Kalashnikovs, hand grenades, a pistol and 200 grammes of dynamite.
An underworld armourer off to supply a gangster client for a particularly bloody feud? Or a would-be quartermaster to the terror network that brought carnage to the French capital last weekend?
As of yet the exact plans of the suspect, who was arrested eight days before the Paris attacks, are still a mystery. Identified only as Vlatko V by German officials, he remains in the custody of German police, who are “intensively investigating whether there is a connection with the events in Paris”, according to Bavarian interior ministry.
• EU chiefs defy French demands for border controls on jihadist fighters
Either way, though, the case provides a disturbing snapshot of what security experts call the "Ant trade", the cross-border weapons traffic that arms criminals - and now also terrorists - all over Europe.
"We call it the Ant Trade because in Europe, it tends to be lots of individual operators carrying one piece at a time, rather than big lorry loads," said An Vranckx, an expert with the Belgium-based Group for Research and Information on Peace and Security, which monitors the global black market in small arms. "But if that ant column is big enough, it all adds up."
In Britain, the "Ant Trade" showed its deadly cumulative effect two years ago, when Dale Cregan, a Manchester gangster, used a hand-grenade in an attack that killed two female police officers.
The grenade was part of a batch of several hundred from former Yugoslavia believed to have been been used by everyone from Ulster paramilitaries through to drug gangs in north-west England. And as David Dyson, a British firearms analyst, told The Telegraph last week: "If a guy like that in Manchester can get hold of this kind of stuff, people who follow Isil may be able to do the same".
Mercifully, true weapons of war are still rare on Britain's streets, thanks to draconian gun laws imposed in the wake of the Hungerford and Dunblane massacres, and to our easily-policed island borders. Indeed, when Scotland Yard parades confiscated underworld firearms stashes, they are more likely to be made up of World War II antiques and converted blank firers - a sign that the gun black market is not exactly a land of plenty.
It is, however, a different story on the Continent, where thanks to the borderless Schengen zone, those involved in the "Ant Trade" face little more than a long-distance commute to and from their supply sources in the ex-Communist countries of eastern Europe.
In the Soviet era, the likes of Bulgaria and Ukraine maintained vast small arms silos in anticipation of all-out war with Nato, and when the Iron Curtain finally fell, those weapons leaked all over the world, fuelling conflicts from West Africa to the Balkans.
In Albania alone, for example, some half a million weapons were pillaged from state depots following the collapse of the government in 1997, while in Serbia and Bosnia, nearly two million illegal weapons are believed to have remained in private hands since the civil war.
Neighbouring Montenegro, the home of the man arrested on the German Autobahn, is similarly awash. Indeed, it may be no coincidence that Montenegro is also the home Europe's top armed robbery gang, the Pink Panthers, whose raids on high-end jewellery stores in London and Paris netted them £100m in the last decade.
But while the Panthers' exploits have made them folk legends - a drama about their exploits, featuring John Hurt, hit British TV screens earlier this month - the same weapons supplies that made them so formidable are now also being accessed by terrorists.
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