Pres. Buhari sacks official who approved the new law that led to Adeboye resigning as RCCG GO

President Buhari has sacked the head of the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria, FRCN, Jim Obazee pictured above, after the council enforced a law that led to the exit of Pastor E.A Adeboye as the General Overseer of RCCG in Nigeria on Saturday January 7th. Pastor Adeboye during the church's Ministers thanksgiving, announced his retirement as the General Overseer of the church only in Nigeria following a new law that disallows leaders of a non-profit organization, churches inclusive, to remain in office for more than 20 years. Although the law was enacted in 2011, it had not been implemented by any administration. Obazee is said to have had a clash with the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Okechukwu Enelemah........More

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Asia's richest man, Jack Ma meets with Donald Trump on plans to create 1million jobs in US

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Asia's richest man, Jack Ma, the billionaire founder and executive chairman of the Alibaba Group met with Donald Trump on Monday to discuss plans for creating "one million" jobs in the U.S. through the company's e-commerce platform. "Jack plans to share how Alibaba will create 1 million U.S. jobs by enabling 1 million small businesses to sell American goods to China and Asian consumers on the Alibaba platform," Brion Tingler, head of external affairs at Alibaba, said in a statement after the meeting. Trump praised Ma after the meeting as a "great, great entrepreneur and one of the best in the world." "We had a great meeting," Trump told the press pool at Trump Tower. "It's jobs. You just saw what happened with Fiat where they're going to build a massive plant in Michigan. And we're very happy. And Jack and I are going to do some great things.

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How we picked beneficiaries for the N5000 stipend – Presidency

Senior Special Assistant to VP Yemi Osinbajo on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, has explained how the Presidency picked beneficiaries of the N5000 stipend for vulnerable Nigerians.

Akande in the statement released yesterday, said the Community-Based Targeting (CBT) model of the World Bank was used in 2015 to identify most of the beneficiaries.

According to Akande, the vulnerable Nigerians had been picked by the last administration during an exercise carried out by World bank which was certainly devoid of any manipulations or fraud. Akande said in eight of the nine pilot states, the process had taken place at least two years ago through the World Bank-supported programme under an agreement entered into with the state governments.

“This is an entirely fair and transparent process and short of mischief, there is no way you can describe this process as partisan. The president is president of the entire country and the SIPs are for all Nigerians as the case may be. First, the officials at federal level, working with the state officials, identify the poorest local government areas, using an existing poverty map for the state, then the local officials identify the poorest communities in the LGAs and we send our teams there. The first thing our team does after selection of the LGAs is to select members of the NOA, the LGA and community officials to form the CBT team. Then we train the selected officials on how to conduct focus group discussions at community level. These focus groups comprise women, men, youths as the community determines. After training them, the CBT teams go to each of their communities to sensitize the leaders, including traditional rulers, on the CBT process and the necessity for objectivity and openness in the process. At that meeting, they firm up a date to convene a community meeting at a designated location within the community. On the set date, discussions are held in the local languages, using terminologies that resonate in that community. The CBT team will explain to the community the purpose of the gathering; that is, to determine the parameters of poverty upon which persons can be described as poor and vulnerable within the context of that community. The CBT teams will then engage each group (men, women and youths) in the conversation around the criteria and parameters for determining the poorest people. The groups would then be encouraged to identify those households that fall within the criteria that the community itself determines, and told that the information is required for government’s planning purposes. Various poverty criteria have been thrown up so far. In some cases, people have said it’s the number of times they eat, it’s the number of times the fumes of firewood go up from the house, the size of farmland or type of crops grown. Then, the groups resume in plenary and report back the criteria and parameters discussed. The CBT team would then compile the criteria and parameters and ask each group to return to their break-out sessions and now begin to identify the households in the community that have been identified as fitting the criteria and parameters. Once that’s done at the groups, everybody comes together again with names compiled by each group. Now, when the same name is featured in at least two of the three groups, it is deemed qualified to be listed on the social register. At this stage, we now enumerate the members of the household and open a bank account for each of the care-givers by capturing the biometric data of households identified as among the poorest and vulnerable.”

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Super Eagles Won

Stephen Jnr, son of late Super Eagles coach, Stephen Keshi, shared some words of wisdom he learnt from his father while he alive. Posting a throwback photo on Instagram of Keshi celebrating after a major win, Stephen Jnr wrote:

"My mode for 2017. Pops took it to another level when he realized that he had to do it for all of Africa. He told me, "If you do it for yourself it will never be enough". Your words of wisdom will live forever."

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