Laolu Akande, former spokesman of Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, says Nigeria needs bold leaders to confront the country’s multifaceted challenges, especially security and economic problems.

He made this known on Inside Sources with Laolu Akande aired on Channels Television on Friday.

According to him, leaders must be honest and courageous to overcome the challenges in the country.

“The problems as of today, the widespread hardship in the land and the menacing insecurities require courageous leadership at the very top. Our leaders must be bold enough to fire appointed public officials who don’t deliver on their KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

“We have seen in this country how lack of consequences and impunity have created new problems and made old ones worse.

“For example, we have seen how we have been fighting insecurity for decades now and when it seems we’ve solved it at one point, it comes in another form. The problems re-emerge everywhere. There have been claims of collusion of corruption in certain agencies our leaders should not be shy to thoroughly investigate, discover what is really happening and punish those responsible for the corruption and collusion if that is established.

“How is it possible that more than half of the oil lifted in Nigeria for instance is being stolen and no one has been caught or punished in several years?

“As a nation, we are struggling to meet up with our OPEC quota. OPEC cut Nigeria’s quota to 1.38 million barrels per day from 1.78 million bpd because for years, we have failed to meet our quota.

“A President or a governor or elected senator or assembly member is no use, in the long run, if he or she fails to use the big stick against those holding our commonwealth down. Our leaders must be bold enough, honest and forthright to draw a line in the sand on the issue of corruption. It requires boldness. Corruption is corrosive. A former President said if we don’t kill it, it will kill us.

“In 2015, many Nigerians thought that former President whose campaign spearheaded the ‘Change’ narrative would actually bring the change. I served under that administration but that has not happened wight years after. Our leaders who made the promises are still grappling at the straws. Corruption is worse, economy is biting, insecurity is relentless. We seem to lack the bold leadership to look at the problems eyeball to eyeball and say, ‘No more’.

“But Nigerians have given the same set of leaders – the APC, who made that illustrious promise of ‘Change’ in 2015, another chance now under a new President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who would have spent nine months in office at the end of this month.

“The burden that President Tinubu is carrying is heavier than that of President Buhari and it is important that is said because now President Tinubu is not just carrying the burden of promise but he is carrying the burden of truncated hope. And good a thing he has rightly named his agenda Renewed Hope. Nigerians have placed so much expectations on the promises and now they are wondering how come they believed a lie. So, it is up to President Tinubu to show that those promises made in 2015 were no lies. And that is why we are appealing to him today and all those in authority that the government be it executive, judiciary or legislature, it’s important to apply courage and boldness.”

[DailyTrust]

A Federal High Court in Abuja has ordered the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice (AGF) to re-open the investigation and prosecution of those who murdered the founder of Newswatch Magazine, Dele Giwa, in 1986.

Dele Giwa was murdered on October 19, 1986 in his Lagos office through a letter bomb.

Delivering judgment on Friday in a suit against the AGF, Justice Inyang Edem Ekwo held the Chief Law Officer of the Federation is under obligation to prosecute and penalize killers of media practitioners in the country.

Apart from Dele Giwa, the court ordered that the killings of other journalists in the discharge of their lawful duties must be investigated and perpetrators brought to book in line with the provisions of the law.

The Incorporated Trustees of Media Rights Agenda, MRA, had dragged the AGF before the court for the enforcement of fundamental rights of media practitioners to safety as guaranteed by the 1999 Constitution and African Charters on Human Rights.

Justice Ekwo in the judgment ordered the Federal Government to ensure adequate protection and safety of lives of journalists as enshrined in sections 33, 39 of the Constitution and Articles 4 and 9 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights.

Details later...

[DailyPost]

If I were to choose between the governed and its government, I will choose the latter. This is because it has been established that the former are fortune hunters who in a world of ‘survival of the fittest’, seize every available opportunity to inflict hardship on their fellow compatriots while the latter is saddled with the onerous task of keeping man who is often insane under control.  Nothing brings this home more vividly than the ongoing war of attrition being waged not just by the political and economic elite, but by ordinary Nigerians against Nigerians.

We have all become vultures feeding on the blood of the most vulnerable. From fuel subsidy scammers, foreign exchange speculators to the Kano food distributors who short-changed farmers but locked up food items in warehouses while people starve, the egg and bread hawker on the streets of Lagos who attributed high cost of their wares to dollar exchange rate, the first instinct is always how to exploit the vulnerable.

 I discovered from a nearby grocery store last Sunday that the price of a loaf of bread had gone up to N1, 300. It used to be N1, 000. Since there was no value added, I decided to drive to another store where I thought I could get ‘coconut bread’ for N1,200. There also, I discovered the price had gone up to N1,600. After wondering when we started importing flour and coconut, I was forced to buy the bread. The story was not different from my neighbour who supplies us fresh eggs from his farm at N2,400 per crate. The price has gone up to N3,500, per crate. He attributed the difference to high cost of drugs needed to treat his birds.

High cost of living has led to demonstration against government in a number of Nigerian cities. Last Thursday, it was the turn of Kano State. The city’s residents took to the streets calling on President Tinubu to come to their rescue as they could not “eat three square meals even the one square meal is now becoming difficult, as a bag of rice which used to go for N25,000 now attracts N70,000. And “Sugar which was sold for N8,000 now goes for N75,000”.

 But as if to confirm we are all vultures, three days later, on Sunday February 11, the Kano State Public Complaints and Anti-corruption Commission confiscated 10 warehouses with hoarded assorted foodstuffs in Dawakin Tofa Local Government Area of the state. According to Muhyl Magaji, the commission’s chairman, “The owners have been issued notice to report to the commission preparatory to facing charges before the court of law for their illegal activities”.

Perhaps we need a journey through memory to remind ourselves how greed by a few fortune-hunters led to the removal of fuel subsidy by government and the floating of the national currency resulting in current massive depreciation and escalating cost of living.

 Fuel subsidy scam started at the onset of the fourth republic when PDP stalwarts and their sibling defrauded the nation to the tune of N1.7trillion by “forging papers without importing a pint of fuel,” in the words of Audu Ogbe the then PDP national chairman.  A probe by the National Assembly indicted a number of fuel marketers. (Otedola masterminded a DSS sting operation to nail Lawan Farouk for receiving bribe in order redmove his name from the list.)

Then a forensic probe of Sanusi’s (CBN Governor) allegation that $49.8b was not transferred to the federation account by NNPC confirmed $10.8billion was never reconciled. Andrew Yakubu, NNPC group MD later said $8.76B of the amount was used for subsidy. (An Abuja High Court presided over by judge Ahmed Mohammed who ordered EFCC and CBN to transfer $9.8 million and 74,000 pounds recovered from Andrew Yakubu to an account under the control of the Chief Registrar of the court in March 2022, discharged and acquitted him of all charges).

Sanusi however insisted such expenditure without appropriation was unconstitutional especially since subsidy on kerosene had been cancelled by Yar’Adua since June 15, 2009 when it was discovered that ‘if anyone was benefitting, it must be marketers and government officials. Sadly, about N500 billion was purportedly spent on kerosene subsidy in four years when the product was hardly available at filling stations or sold for N150 as against consolidated N50 controlled price. President Jonathan knew about the scam but shielded his friends in PDP, NNPC and the petroleum ministry.

Buhari similarly failed the nation. Isa Yuguda, former governor of Bauchi State and chairman of the committee on subsidy in 2009 told Channels television “I am sad to let Nigerians know what I saw. We came across situations where subsidy was claimed on pipeline that never existed…. Those that claim to pump the product and those that are in the subsidy scam, they just fill papers, invoices and they claim subsidy on it”.

Yuguda was sure Buhari as president who doubled as oil minister for eight years, was aware of the scam. Buhari lacked the political will to act. He chose instead to leave the poisoned apple for his successor by refusing to budget for fuel subsidy beyond June 2023.

But no sooner President Tinubu declared during his inauguration that ‘fuel subsidy was gone’, than the vultures in the guise of marketers swung into action. Within an hour of the statement fuel disappeared from filling stations across Nigeria or sold for about N700 per litre where available.

President Tinubu also admitted inheriting ‘a rotten’ financial system. The Jim Obazee-led special investigation of Emefiele’s tenure as CBN governor was to later unearth a damning report of monumental mismanagement, fraud and arbitrariness, looting, diversion of funds, forgery and collusion against Emefiele and about 15 others.  Specifically, the was an investment of billions of dollars in over 500 banks IN USA, UK and China without approval of CBN board. There was £543,482,213 in fixed deposit in one of the banks in UK.

From alleged manipulation of the forex markets by banks, First Bank, UBA, Zenith, Access and GTB reported a combined N1.38trillion in forex revaluation in the first half of 2023.

As at July 2023, there was also N26.627 trillion in ‘ways and means’, whose “management was dogged by a lot of arbitrariness with funds taken out of the national treasury without necessary authorization”.

Government’s efforts at stabilizing the exchange rate through the unification of the official and parallel market exchange rates “hailed by economists and other stakeholders” have continued to be sabotaged by “some commercial banks who hold long-term foreign exchange positions to enable them profit from the volatile movements of exchange rate”.

In a move to reduce the pressure on the naira, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has raised a 7,000-man special task force across its 14 zonal commands to clamp down on dollar racketeers.

For President Tinubu, the subsidy removal and the floating of the national currency were fait accompli. Unlike President Jonathan and Buhari, there was no escape route. There was just no money to run the government. With 97% of our resources going into servicing debts, borrowing was not an option.

To reduce the burden of Nigerians, President Tinubu must recover our monies from all indicted oil marketers. The banks and some others owe AMCON close to N6trillion. These taxpayers’ monies must be retrieved from the banks and other debtors who are today serving senators or live like princes.

And as an elected sovereign, the president must be reminded he is free to take ‘protective measures including invasion of personal privacy and assault on group culture’ to safeguard the interest of the state.  

Less than 24 hours to the primary election of the All Progressives Congress (APC), to elect its flag bearer for the September 21 governorship election in Edo state, a frontline aspirant of the party, Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, has withdrawn from the race.

He announced his withdrawal on Friday, February 16, in a statement made available to journalists.

The withdrawal notice was addressed to the national chairman of the party, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, and the Acting State Chairman of the party, Emperor Jarrett Tenebe.

Full text of the withdrawal letter reads: “Few months ago, after extensively interacting with family, friends, political associates, and supporters, I joined the 2024 Edo state gubernatorial race as a result of my passion and commitment to the cause of rescuing Edo state from the current condition of decrepitude.

“I entered the contest as a progressive democrat, with an open mind to keenly contest and accept the result of a process that is fair, credible and transparent. I appreciate the commended the effort made by the National Working Committee (NWC) of the APC to correct the erroneous impression maliciously created by certain persons that some aspirants, including myself had been disqualified from the gubernatorial contest. The NWC constituted the authentic screening committee and all twelve aspirants who purchased and completed the nomination forms were successfully screened and subsequently issued clearance certificates. This step was praise worthy and helped in restoring our integrity in the eyes of the public.

“Having being cleared to contest, I regrettably wish to announce my withdrawal from the race. Although painful, this decision has become imperative after an exhaustive consultation with my family, friends, political associates and supporters. I make this sacrifice in the interest of the peace and unity that the party desperately requires at both state and national levels.

“I humbly appeal to the good people of Edo state to accept my decision which I very personal and I promise to be there for them at all times.

“Thankfully, I acknowledge the fatherly role of President Bola Tinubu, GCFR, as well as the party’s national leadership for the fairness and commitment to the democratic process. Likewise, I remain grateful to the state working committee for their principled stand to allow a level playing field for all aspirants. I am extremely appreciative to my family, friends, supporters, well-wishers, and the extraordinary hardworking men and women of our campaign organization who were prepared to stop at nothing to see me fly the party’s flag. I salute your great works, your steadfastness and courage.

“Finally, as a loyal party man, I wish to pledge that I and my teeming supporters shall support any candidate that emerges in the primary election holding tomorrow.”

Russia’s top opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who died Friday in an Arctic prison according to Russia’s penitentiary service, survived a poisoning attack in 2020 only to be sentenced to 19 years in a penal colony.

Here are 10 key dates in his campaign against Russian President Vladimir Putin:

– 2007: anti-corruption campaigner –

Navalny begins buying shares in state-owned oil giants to access company reports and scour them for evidence of corruption, which he documents on his blog.

The same year he is excluded from the liberal opposition party Yabloko for taking part in “nationalist activities”.

– December 2011: leads election protests –

Navalny sets up the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which gains a huge following with exposes about the vast riches amassed by Kremlin elites.

In the winter of 2011-2012, he leads huge protests after parliamentary elections won by Putin’s United Russia party, a vote marred by allegations of fraud.

– July 2013: embezzlement conviction –

He is convicted of defrauding the government in the Kirov region of 16 million rubles ($500,000) in a timber deal while acting as an advisor to the governor.

He denies the charges, claiming they are an attempt to silence him.

– September 2013: Moscow mayoral bid –

Navalny finishes a strong second behind Kremlin-backed incumbent Sergei Sobyanin in the race for mayor of Moscow.

His calls for a recount are dismissed.

– March 2017: Medvedev ‘duck’ expose –

Navalny’s video about the lavish lifestyle of then prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, which includes a claim that one of his estates has a duck house in the middle of a pond, sparks rallies.

– December 2018: barred from presidential election –

He is blocked from running for president against Putin because of his embezzlement conviction.

He urges Russians to boycott the vote, which nonetheless sees Putin secure a fourth term.

– August 2020: poisoning –

Navalny is hospitalised on August 20, 2020, in Siberia and placed in a medically induced coma after losing consciousness during a flight.

He is transferred to a hospital in Berlin, where tests show he was poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent.

He accuses Putin of being behind his poisoning, which the Kremlin denies.

– January-February 2021: arrested and jailed –

He returns to Moscow, where he is detained shortly after landing at the airport.

Tens of thousands of people demonstrate across Russia for his release.

In February, he is handed a two-and-a-half-year sentence for breaching the conditions of a suspended sentence while recuperating in Germany, and sent to a penal colony.

– August 2023: 19 years –

Navalny’s sentence is increased to nine years after a conviction on new charges of embezzlement and contempt of court.

A gaunt Navalny, who has experienced major weight loss in prison, is then sentenced to an additional 19 years at a harsher “special regime” facility on charges of “extremism”.

He goes missing for over two weeks in December 2023, before being located in a remote penal colony north of the Arctic Circle.

– February 16, 2024: dies in prison –

Navalny dies at the Arctic prison colony, Russia’s federal penitentiary service says in a statement.

It says Navalny lost consciousness after going for a walk and could not be revived by medics.

“The causes of death are being established,” it said.

[Vanguard]

THE American World Bank and the Europe an International Monetary Fund, IMF, have in the past few weeks circled round Nigeria like vultures waiting for the prey to die.

The twin organisations have become more active and quite audacious since President Bola Ahmed Tinubu came to power on May 29, 2023. They are like predators, ready for the kill.

While Nigerians are hungry and their anger is beginning to boil over to street protests due to the stifling economic policies of the Tinubu administration, these organisations are praising Tinubu to the high heavens and telling him to tighten the noose round the necks of the people.

Inflation is at 32 per cent. Fuel price increased from N238 per litre on Inauguration Day to N617-N700, and the Naira has dipped from a depth of about N700 to the dollar last year, to over N1,500. While these have resulted in devastating consequences, both institutions tell Tinubu he has not gone far enough.

In its Friday, February 9, 2024, statement, the IMF praised Tinubu for making “a strong start”. It further encouraged him to heavily tax hapless Nigerians as part of a so-called “ambitious domestic revenue mobilisation agenda”.

In the statement signed by its Spokesperson, Julie Ziegler, the IMF, like a school master to an errant pupil, told Tinubu: “Fuel and electricity subsidies are costly, do not reach those that most need government support and should be phased out completely.” In other words, it is instructing him and his team to further increase the current prices of fuel and electricity.

The IMF also encouraged Tinubu to take more foreign loans because in its view: “Nigeria’s capacity to repay the Fund is adequate under the baseline.” As an incentive, it offered trade-offs “… between urgent humanitarian needs and debt service, including to the Fund”.

These IMF assessments and instructions tally with those of the World Bank. The latter’s Lead Economist for Nigeria, Alex Sienaert, had on Wednesday, December 13, 2023, told Tinubu: “We think the price of petrol should be around N750 per litre more than the N650 per litre currently paid by Nigerians.”

So, why are the IMF and World Bank so callous and inhuman? It is simply because that is why they were set up in the first place; to exploit poor countries, degrade and destroy their production capacity, control their resources and destroy their education system so they will be incapable of thinking. For instance, while the twin agencies are insistent on increasing the price of fuel, they do not encourage the local refining of fuel by an oil producing country like Nigeria. That will go against the belief they have instilled in the African people; that our role in the world is to produce raw materials while their God-given role is to manufacture.

This is why apart from raising what Franz Fanon called ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ as elites, they also go for the jugular by destroying our education system and convincing generations of Nigerian governments that we do not need to know about our past. That was why until 2022, they banned the teaching of history in all Nigerian schools.

Surely, it is dangerous to allow slaves to be educated. But where it becomes inevitable, the bosses of the IMF and World Bank, try to ensure that the education the former slave colonies receive, are uncritical, subservient, if not useless.

Let me tell you a verifiable story. The World Bank told African countries in the 1980s that they do not need universities; what they need is technical education to run a basic economy. So, it discouraged African countries from developing education by seeking to destroy the existing university education.

It got a listening ear in the Babangida military regime that thought learning is a danger to its dictatorship. The regime which had accused academics in tertiary institutions of “teaching what they are not paid to teach”, agreed with the World Bank to stop funding university education.

So, both sides in 1987 signed an agreement for the World Bank to carry out a “restructuring exercise” of all federal universities in Nigeria using a loan facility of $120-150 million.

Under the “Eligibility Criteria for Federal Universities” the government accepted the conditionalities of the World Bank which included the freezing of recruitment of all categories of staff, mandatory staff retrenchment, increase in tuition fees for remedial and non-degree students, cancelling remedial courses in the Arts and phasing out sub-degree programmes that are being offered in other tertiary institutions.

Other World Bank conditionalities accepted by the Nigerian government, include eliminating post-graduate programmes in any department that had not yet graduated undergraduate students, phasing out any department that has been “in existence for more than ten years, but has less than 40 full time equivalent undergraduate students” and phasing out any department that has been “in existence for more than ten years, and has less than two thirds of the normally required academic staff.”

The World Bank also demanded the commercialisation of facilities which may include classrooms and lecture theatres, and that the procurement of 60 per cent equipment by the universities “shall be in accordance with standard specifications and approved manufacturers“ of the bank. To cap these, the bank demanded that it must scrutinise all the curricular of the universities and that there must be the mandatory importation of expatriate staff whose salaries are to be heavily topped.

The bank and the conniving Babangida regime agreed that Nigerian universities must meet all the conditionalities between June 1990 and June 1994. All these were published by the World Bank under its “Progress Report on the World Bank-Federal Universities Adjustment Operation.”

The country was saved the implementation of this destructive agreement due to mass protests by the media, professional associations, academics and students. In its desperate attempt to implement this World Bank gambit, the Babangida regime shut down many campuses and shot four students of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife.

This slavish project was buried when in the bloody April 22, 1990 aborted coup speech, Major Gideon Orkar gave one of the reasons for the coup as: “The cowing of the university teaching and non-teaching staff by an intended massive purge, using the 150 million dollar loan as the necessitating factor.”

The twin institutions, which exercise power without responsibility, are predatory birds, and as the 1969 title of James Hardley Chase novel asserts: “The Vulture is a Patient Bird.”

 The World Bank and IMF remind me of ‘The Vultures’ a poem by David Diop in which he wrote: “In those days, When civilization kicked us in the face, When holy water slapped our cringing brows, The vultures built in the shadow of their talons, The blood-stained monument of tutelage.”

…Says LASG is intentional, unrelenting in addressing traffic issues

Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, on Wednesday, said the much-anticipated Red Line rail will be commissioned on Thursday, February 29 by President Bola Tinubu.

Governor Sanwo-Olu made the announcement at the Lagos State Parking Authority (LASPA) Stakeholders Forum themed: “Parking in Lagos, the journey so far – Assessing the social and economic impact of the industry” held at GRA, Ikeja.

He said the Red Line rail, which runs from Agbado in Ogun State and terminates at the Oyingbo area of Lagos, is one of the integrated mass transit corridors in the state in line with his administration’s THEMES+ Developmental Agenda.

Governor Sanwo-Olu said his administration, which is intentional and unrelenting in its efforts to address all traffic issues in the state, has identified indiscriminate parking as one of the major challenges of the free flow of traffic.

He said the Lagos State Parking Policy, which came into being with the establishment of the Lagos State Parking Authority (LASPA) was to regulate all forms of parking by adopting innovative, adaptable, and sustainable operational systems and technologies.

Governor Sanwo-Olu, while reiterating his administration’s zero-tolerance policy for the flouting of rules and regulations guiding the Lagos transport sector, urged all stakeholders in the sector to comply with the Lagos State Parking Policy in the renewed and intentional effort to curb indiscriminate parking in the State.

He said: “We have adopted a model that ensures a win-win situation between the State and Local Governments. Lagos has already shown that this kind of state-LGA partnership can work, through the establishment of LASAA, and the Land Use Charge, and we are now set to showcase the same with the Lagos State Parking Authority.

“Therefore, the Local Governments in Lagos State, under the Conference 57 umbrella, and Mr. Kolade Alabi, the National President of the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON), are our strategic partners in this renewed effort to regulate parking across the State.

“Just recently, we approved the On-Street parking scheme, to regulate the existing roadside parking and checkmate haphazard parking in line with global best practices. We are utilising existing major roads suitable to accommodate On-Street parking, and to create additional parking spaces, especially in areas with high parking traffic. 

“The On-Street parking scheme, as with most of our projects, is being done in partnership with the private sector, and we will continue to explore the Public Private Partnership model to benefit from its effectiveness in delivering high-quality service to meet the needs of our increasing population.”

 Speaking earlier, the LASPA General Manager, Mrs. Adebisi Adelabu, said parking management was on the centre stage towards meeting the target of traffic management of Governor Sanwo-Olu’s administration.

Adelabu urged all stakeholders to work with LASPA in its effort to rid Lagos of parking-induced gridlocks, through the effective implementation of the Lagos State Parking Policy.

She said: “As you are all aware Traffic management and Transportation is the first pillar of the THEMES+ agenda of the Governor Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu-led administration. It might interest you to know that Parking management takes centre stage in the actualisation of this objective, as it is practically impossible to venture into traffic management without putting into consideration the issue of parking management.

“Our mandate is clear and we are resolute in pursuit of excellence in its actualisation in line with global best practices. We are fully empowered and also intentional about operating a more efficient and sustainable parking management system in line with the administration’s THEMES+ agenda to move Lagos State towards a 21st-century economy.

“We have a vision and are not unaware of the challenges to achieving it, but we are resolute in the pursuit of our goals and objectives towards the actualisation of this vision. This vision aims to achieve excellence in how Lagos State parking policies are envisioned and developed in line with the best global practices for a modern, efficient and sustainably managed parking system towards reducing congestion, disruption, improved road safety and changing travel behaviour.

SIGNED

GBOYEGA AKOSILE

CHIEF PRESS SECRETARY

14 FEBRUARY 2024

Suddenly the walls collapsed! Wow! The barriers were completely removed. All these obstacles you are seeing on your way will melt away. Yes, they will. They must! It will happen suddenly, totally, swiftly. You will look for them after reading this message and you will see them no more. Nothing can block your blessings again. God has blessed you and it cannot be reversed. Yes, this is our season. Are you not seeing it? No wall, no barrier, no obstacle, no power, no conspiracy can stop us. God gave the Israelites the city of Jericho, but the walls were impregnable. It was high, broad and well-fortified. The gates were tightly shut and roundly guarded. It was simply humanly impossible to go in and conquer it. You know this story very well. God had to push down the walls himself. Look at that incredible account again, “When the people heard the sound of the rams’ horns, they shouted as loud as they could. Suddenly, the walls of Jericho collapsed, and the Israelites charged straight into the town and captured it.” Joshua 6:20. Every wall standing against you will fall today! Yes, those angels that push down the walls of Jericho are still around.

   Maybe, we will go back a bit to get the background of this display of this rare phenomenal divine power. God miraculously took the Israelites across the muddy River Jordan. The records had it that immediately the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant stepped into the river, it parted. Yes, the God that divided the Red Sea will also divide the Jordan. He is always ready to repeat what he has done for us in the past. God of yesterday is also the God of today and tomorrow. He does not change. He will do everything necessary to confirm his words and keep his promises. He had already given Israel the Promised Land by oath and the detailed boundaries hundreds of years ago and will not allow any obstacle to stand on their way. Listen, no barrier can stop the plan and promises of God for your life. He said that forever his word is settled in heaven (and on earth). God’s program for your life is settled forever. It cannot be changed, hindered or truncated by any circumstance, man or devil. But you must also play your role very well and on time. What did Israel do to attract the divine fulfillment and possession? Listen very carefully.

The Ogun State Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Security, Hon. Bolu Owotomo has said that the promotion of sustainable agriculture and food security is crucial for the well-being and survival of the nation at large.

Owotomo stated this during a retreat organized for the management of the Ministry of Agriculture, with the theme; "Achieving Agriculture and Food Security in Ogun State: The Place of Public Servants",  held  at Grand Inn & Suites, GRA, Ijebu 0de, Ogun State.

He said that the state government in line with federal government objectives has been encouraging dry season farming to ensure all year round planting, adding that the state has been able to reach out to 500 farmers within one week with input and other materials needed for dry season planting with  support from the Federal Government, Development Partners and other stakeholders.

He also assured the residents of the state government readiness to produce more agricultural inputs to the markets, saying that efforts are on top of gear to encourage more youth engagement in agriculture through improvement on mechanized farming.

Owotomo said that the importance of agriculture cannot be overemphasized appealing to all stakeholders to contribute their quota towards achieving food security in the state, as he emphasized that the retreat would give more insight into the activities of the ministry and allow for cross fertilization of ideas.

Speaking on the theme, the resource person, Prof. Kolawole Adebayo advocated the need for inter-ministerial collaboration, especially between the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), for the food system to be sustainable.

He said leaders must demonstrate the prowess and tenacity to evolve thought that would drive economic sustainability and food security.

Prof. Adebayo highlighted factors undermining the attainment of economic, environmental and food security to include continuous strive for global domination by superpowers, multinationals, political instability and inconsistency in policy among others.

Delivering his keynote address at the retreat, the state Head of Service, Mr. Kolawole Fagbohun described the retreat as strategic, as it would afford every stakeholders the opportunity to evaluate the mode of operation and re-strategize for better performance in all critical areas, admonishing them to always think out of the box.

He maintained that  the management staff have the responsibility of working directly with the public, to provide solutions to challenges facing the farming community. 

In his welcome address, the Permanent Secretary Ministry of Agriculture, Mr. Samuel Adeogun noted that agriculture was key in the 'ISEYA' mantra of the present administration, disclosed that there was a need to critically look at responsibilities of each departments and what they intend to put in place to ensure delivery of the mandate.

Adeogun stressed the need for team work among the various departments and units within the ministry, to achieve a common goal in the task to deliver the set target in the sector.

On his part, the Commissioner for Budget and Planning, Mr. Olaolu Olabimitan, represented by the Chief Estimate Officer, Mr. Musibau Elemide advised that whatever decision taken must be in tandem with the overall vision of the state agricultural policy, saying that all target set must be realistic and achievable.

Olabimitan added that knowledge gained by participants should be cascaded to operational officers in the Ministry, so as to obtain their input in setting targets.

Speaking on behalf of other participants, Mrs. Kehinde Jokotoye and Mr. Ibrahim Busi appreciated the leadership of the ministry for putting up such a programme, assuring that the outcome of the retreat would greatly make an impact and helps in achieving the state agricultural agenda.

Highlights of the retreat included presentation by various departments, Aerobic, health talk, medical check up among others.