Germany is eyeing imports of natural gas from Nigeria in an effort to secure and diversify its energy supply, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said during a visit to the country.

“This will also have an impact on the global gas price,” Scholz said in the Nigerian capital Abuja on Sunday after a meeting with president Bola Tinubu. If more states offered gas on the global market, prices would decrease, the German leader said.

“It is important to use the capacities where they are, and that we diversify production all over the globe,” Scholz added.

Tinubu said that given Nigeria’s sizable resources, “we are ready to encourage investments in a gas pipeline.”

Germany — which switched off its last nuclear power plants this year and weaned off Russian pipeline gas during last year’s energy crisis — will need large volumes of LNG to run its power-hungry industry. So far, Europe’s economic powerhouse gets crude oil from Nigeria, but not gas.

Scholz last year also visited Senegal, where he offered German help to open up gas fields off the coast. The West African country expects to deliver first quotas of the fuel in the second half of 2024.

This week’s trip is Scholz’s third to Africa since taking office two years ago. Nigeria, the continent’s largest economy, also wants to make business deals in the areas of raw materials with European partners. Scholz will travel to Ghana on Monday (today).

 

For quite a while, Nigeria has been talking up its desire to end its reliance on oil money and earn more from other sources, especially farming. Its population of around 213m, the biggest in Africa, has some 37m hectares of fertile land. But it grows too little on it.

Worse, some of its produce isn’t healthy. Food exported to Europe and America has been rejected because of its excessive residue of pesticide. To feed Nigeria’s own people, let alone markets abroad, farmers will have to cut back on their use of some chemicals.

That will not be easy, since Nigeria is one of the continent’s leaders at splurging on pesticides, importing some $384m-worth in 2018 alone to kill bugs and weeds. Yet 58% of the pesticides registered for use in Nigeria are banned in Europe because of their toxicity.

Sometimes the chemicals are so strong that they don’t only wipe out pests and other crop-predators; they can kill people. In 2020 some 270 people in a village in Benue state died after fishermen using chemicals to catch fish had dumped some of them into the community’s main water source. Scientists at several Nigerian universities argue that dangerous pesticides and other agrochemicals are contributing to rising rates of cancer, which kills as many as 79,000 Nigerians a year. A recent study found that roughly 80% of the pesticides most commonly used by small-scale farmers are highly hazardous.

“Farmers use what’s available and recommended to them,” taking advice from marketers and traders, says Jochen Luckscheiter of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, an NGO tied to Germany’s Green party. “If you want to stop them, you have to stop the supply—and make alternative products available.”

In August environmental activists and politicians gathered in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, to review the current laws on importing and using pesticides—and discovered that hardly any exist. Instead, they lamented that two bills going through parliament will make it easier for foreign firms to sell dangerous wares.

Boosting Nigeria’s farm output is no simple task. Farmers need seeds that produce higher yields, affordable fertiliser and better access to markets. They also need security. Thousands have fled their homes and fields because of jihadists in the north and to escape fighting over land between herders and farmers. By contrast with these challenges, it ought to be easy to regulate pesticides so they do not poison people.

A boat carrying over 100 passengers capsized mid water at Benue river on Saturday.

Traders, women and children, heading for Binnari town in Karim-Lamido local government area of the state were on the ill-fated boat.

Many of the passengers were returning from Mayoreneyo fish market in Ardo-Kola LGA.

The boat left Mayoreneyo local jetty at about 3.30pm and capsized 40 minutes later, according to sources.

A resident of Mayoreneyo, Musa Mayoreneyo, told our correspondent that the ill-fated boat had earlier conveyed the passengers from Binnari to Mayoreneyo.

In a telephone interview, a resident of Binnari, said, “As l am  talking to you now, only bodies of two persons were recovered by local divers.”

A source at the Mayoreneyo local jetty told our reporter that none of the passengers had life jacket when the incident occurred.

Acting chairman of inland water transporters in Taraba state, Jidda Mayoreneyo, said that  about 15 bodies were recovered close to the scene.

Confirming the incident, Chairman, caretaker committee of Ardo-Kola, Dalhatu Kawu, described it as tragic.

 

Daily Trust

Gaza receives largest aid shipment so far as deaths top 8,000 and Israel widens military offensive

Nearly three dozen trucks entered Gaza on Sunday in the largest aid convoy since the war between Israel and Hamas began, but humanitarian workers said the assistance still fell desperately short of needs after thousands of people broke into warehouses to take flour and basic hygiene products.

The Gaza Health Ministry said the death toll among Palestinians passed 8,000, mostly women and minors, as Israeli tanks and infantry pursued what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a “second stage” in the war ignited by Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 incursion. The toll is without precedent in decades of Israeli-Palestinian violence. Over 1,400 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during the initial attack, also an unprecedented figure.

Communications were restored to most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people Sunday after an Israeli bombardment described by residents as the most intense of the war knocked out phone and internet services late Friday.

Israel has allowed only a trickle of aid to enter. On Sunday, 33 trucks carrying water, food and medicine entered the only border crossing from Egypt, a spokesperson at the Rafah crossing, Wael Abo Omar, told The Associated Press.

After visiting the Rafah crossing, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court called the suffering of civilians “profound” and said he had not been able to enter Gaza. “These are the most tragic of days,” said Karim Khan, whose court has been investigating the actions of Israeli and Palestinian authorities since 2014.

Khan called on Israel to respect international law but stopped short of accusing it of war crimes. He called Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack a serious violation of international humanitarian law. “The burden rests with those who aim the gun, missile or rocket in question,” he said.

The Israeli military said Sunday that it had struck more than 450 militant targets over the past 24 hours, including Hamas command centers and anti-tank missile launching positions. Huge plumes of smoke rose over Gaza City. Military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said dozens of militants were killed.

Hagari, who said ground operations were intensifying, also reiterated calls for Gaza residents to move south, saying they’d have better access to food, water and medicine there.

“This is a matter of urgency,” he said.

Israel says most Gaza residents have heeded its orders to flee to the southern part of the besieged territory, but hundreds of thousands remain in the north, in part because Israel has also bombarded targets in so-called safe zones. More than 1.4 million people in Gaza have fled their homes.

The Hamas military wing said its militants clashed with Israeli troops who entered the northwest Gaza Strip with small arms and anti-tank missiles. Palestinian militants have continued firing rockets into Israel, including toward its commercial hub, Tel Aviv.

The aid warehouse break-ins were “a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down after three weeks of war and a tight siege on Gaza,” said Thomas White, Gaza director for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA. “People are scared, frustrated and desperate.”

UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma said the crowds broke into four facilities on Saturday. She said the warehouses did not contain any fuel, which has been in critically short supply since Israel cut off all shipments. Israel says Hamas would use it for military purposes and that the militant group is hoarding large fuel stocks for itself in the territory. That claim couldn’t be independently verified.

One warehouse held 80 tons of food, the U.N. World Food Program said. It emphasized that at least 40 of its trucks need to cross into Gaza daily just to meet growing food needs.

President Joe Biden in a call with Netanyahu on Sunday “underscored the need to immediately and significantly increase the flow of humanitarian assistance to meet the needs of civilians in Gaza,” the U.S. said.

Israeli authorities said they would soon allow more humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.

But the head of civil affairs at COGAT, the Israeli defense body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs, provided no details on how much aid would be available. Elad Goren also said Israel has opened two water lines in southern Gaza within the past week. The AP could not independently verify that either line was functioning.

Meanwhile, crowded hospitals in Gaza came under growing threat. Residents living near Shifa Hospital, the territory’s largest, said Israeli airstrikes overnight hit near the complex where tens of thousands of civilians are sheltering. Israel accuses Hamas of having a secret command post beneath the hospital but has not provided much evidence. Hamas denies the allegations.

The Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said nearby Israeli airstrikes damaged parts of another Gaza City hospital after it received two calls from Israeli authorities on Sunday ordering it to evacuate. Some windows were blown out, and rooms were covered in debris. The rescue service said airstrikes have hit as close as 50 meters (yards) from the Al-Quds Hospital where 14,000 people are sheltering.

Israel ordered the hospital to evacuate more than a week ago, but it and other medical facilities have refused, saying evacuation would mean death for patients on ventilators.

“Under no circumstances, hospitals should be bombed,” the director general of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Robert Mardini, told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

About 20,000 people were sheltering at Nasser Hospital, emergency director Dr. Mohammed Qandeel said. “I brought my kids to sleep here,” said one displaced resident who gave her name only as Umm Ahmad. “I used to be afraid of my kids playing in the sand. Now their hands are dirty with the blood on the floor.”

An Israeli airstrike hit a two-story house in Khan Younis on Sunday, killing at least 13 people, including 10 from one family. The bodies were brought to the nearby Nasser Hospital, according to an AP journalist at the scene.

The military escalation has increased domestic pressure on Israel’s government to secure the release of 239 hostages seized by Hamas fighters during the Oct. 7 attack.

Hamas says it is ready to release all hostages if Israel releases all of the thousands of Palestinians held in its prisons. Desperate family members of the Israeli captives met with Netanyahu on Saturday and expressed support for an exchange. Israel has dismissed the Hamas offer.

“If Hamas does not feel military pressure, nothing will move forward,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told families of the hostages Sunday.

The Israeli military has stopped short of calling its gradually expanding ground operations inside Gaza an all-out invasion. Casualties on both sides are expected to rise sharply as Israeli forces and Palestinian militants battle in dense residential areas.

Israel says it targets Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that the militants operate among civilians, putting them in danger.

The violence has inflicted serious damage on Gaza’s civilian infrastructure. The territory’s sole power plant shut down shortly after the war began. Hospitals are struggling to keep emergency generators running to operate incubators and other life-saving equipment, and UNRWA is trying to keep water pumps and bakeries running. As water ran short, some Gazans bathed in the sea.

The fighting has raised concerns that the violence could spread across the region. Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah have engaged in daily skirmishes along Israel’s northern border. Hagari said Israel on Sunday struck three militant cells that fired from Lebanon into Israel and killed militants who were trying to enter. Hamas said its forces in Lebanon fired 16 missiles at the Israeli city of Nahariya. Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, said it also fired missiles at several sites.

The Israeli military said early Monday that its aircraft hit military infrastructure in Syria after rockets from there fell in open Israeli territory.

Roughly 250,000 Israelis have been evacuated from their homes because of violence along the border with Gaza and the northern border with Lebanon, according to the Israeli military.

 

AP

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russia's Shoigu accuses West of seeking to expand Ukraine war to Asia-Pacific

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said the West wants to expand the conflict in the Ukraine to the Asia-Pacific region, Russian state media reported, citing comments made at a Beijing defence forum on Monday.

Speaking at the Xiangshan Forum, China's biggest military diplomacy event, Shoigu said NATO is covering up a build-up of forces in the Asia-Pacific region with an "ostentatious desire for dialogue", Russia's TASS news agency reported.

Shoigu said NATO countries were promoting an arms race in the region, increasing their military presence and the frequency and scale of military drills there.

U.S. forces will use information exchanges with Tokyo and Seoul on missile launches to deter Russia and China, Shoigu said. He also accused Washington of trying to use climate change and natural disasters as an excuse for "humanitarian interventions".

Shoigu said the emergence of new security blocs such as the Quad and AUKUS undermined the role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and nuclear non-proliferation efforts in the region.

At the same time, he said, Russia's move to revoke its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty did not mean the end of the agreement, and Russia was not lowering its threshold for the use of nuclear weapons.

"We are only seeking to restore parity with the United States, who has not ratified this treaty," Russia's RIA news agency quoted Shoigu as saying. "We are not talking about its destruction."

Shoigu said that Moscow was ready for talks on the post-conflict settlement of the Ukraine crisis on further 'co-existence' with the West, but that Western countries needed to stop seeking Russia's strategic defeat.

Making clear the conditions for such talks were not in place yet, Shoigu said: "It is also important to ensure equal relations between all the nuclear powers and permanent United Nations Security Council members who carry special responsibility for upholding peace and global stability."

 

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

West using Ukraine as a ‘battering ram’ against Russia – Shoigu

The United States has completely subjugated the Western camp, focusing all their political and military resources on preserving its slipping global dominance by any means necessary, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told the 10th Xiangshan Security Forum in China.

The Russian defense chief arrived in Beijing on Monday on a working visit, during which he delivered a keynote address at a plenary session on ‘Responsibility of large states and cooperation in the field of global security.’

According to Shoigu, Washington has been undermining and destroying the foundations of international security in its quest for overwhelming geopolitical and military-strategic superiority. The US-led NATO bloc has for years ignored Russia's legitimate security interests, stubbornly pursuing the expansion, and eventually forcing Russia to implement “countermeasures” in Ukraine.

“In response, the West openly took a course on inflicting a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia in the hybrid war unleashed against us. Ukraine was cynically chosen as a battering ram, and assigned the role of merely expendable material,” Shoigu said.

However, despite Western arms and support, Kiev’s much-touted counteroffensive has failed, Shoigu reiterated, noting that Ukraine lost “over 90,000 troops, some 600 tanks and almost 1,900 armored vehicles”since June 4 alone. The Russian armed forces will continue to methodically and steadily carry out their tasks, while ensuring the safety of civilians, Shoigu added. 

“Modern cataclysms in international relations are directly related to the opposition of individual states to the inevitable strengthening of the multipolar world,” the Russian defense chief added. 

“Countries that oppose Western neocolonial dictatorship and defend the principles of equality, polycentricity and indivisible security are subject to fierce pressure, including attempts at political and economic strangulation,” Shoigu said.

 

Reuters/RT

It is a well-worn tradition for our colleagues in the Judiciary to use the occasion of their retirement to make fine speeches full of platitudes that hardly anyone notices thereafter. At his valedictory speech on retirement at 70, Musa Dattijo Mohammed of the Supreme Court decided to take matters beyond the next level. He spoke from the heart, on Thursday last week, giving us a peep into the rot pervading in the Judiciary. The speech became an immediate sensation. Daily Trust called it a bombshell that set the internet on fire. Indeed, it did, as what he said furiously dominated discussions in the media throughout the weekend.

I took note of the speech for two reasons. Firstly, Dattijo is the last of my ABU 1976 set on the Supreme Court after the retirement of Abdu Aboki last year. The ABU graduates from the Faculty of Law of that year would arguably be some of the most distinguished in the annals of the Nigerian Judiciary becoming predominant here and there. Only in the last few years had they begun to fade away one after the other. Ibrahim Bala Mairiga retired as Chief Judge of Kebbi State in 2017 followed closely by the exit of Ibrahim Auta, the Chief Judge of the Federal High Courts, and Abdu Aboki of the Supreme Court who retired last year.

Secondly, the speech reminds me of another, some 30 years ago, that caused the same stir among the Nigerian public. I refer to the speech made by Salihu Ibrahim, Chief of Staff of the Nigerian Army when he was retiring in 1993. Maybe some readers might recall that 1993 was probably the nadir the military regimes reached in our history when a free presidential election was cancelled outright leading to widespread protests. Salihu’s valedictory speech was full of regrets at what he saw as the falling standards, lack of professionalism, and all that in the Nigerian Army. His famous one-liner, ‘the Nigerian Army has become the army of anything’ is still widely quoted today to denote an extreme institutional failure.

In his valedictory speech, reminiscence of the famous Salihu Ibrahim’s put down of the Nigerian Army under his command, Dattijo, did not spare the Nigerian Judiciary which in his view has fallen far from grace. He could easily have used the same one-liner to say, ‘The Nigerian Judiciary has become the judiciary of anything’. Dattijo began his speech by wistfully recalling when he joined the Supreme Court things were tolerable, ‘The journey was calm and fulfilling until about halfway through my Supreme Court years when the punctuating turbulent cracks made it awry and askew.’ From thence onwards it was an avalanche of things that have gone amiss.

Starting from the overarching powers of the Chief Justice (CJ) which made other justices of the court, particularly Dattijo who was the second in command, mere onlookers in the administration of justice. The consequence of the CJ’s enormous powers became an opportunity for abuse.

Dattijo said, ‘This needs to change. Continued denial of the existence of this threatening anomaly weakens effective judicial oversight in the country’. He made many other scathing remarks on the poor funding of the Judiciary, deficient salaries of the judges, the corruption in the process of appointing judges, and the quality of judgements of the bench which has become unpredictable due to unnecessary interference.

At a time, in 2022, aggrieved judges of the Supreme Court, including the incumbent CJ had to petition against the shabby treatment meted to them by the head of the court and the Chief Registrar, which ostensibly led to the resignation of Chief Justice Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad.

It was a legion of complaints from the retiring judge. But what galls from what Dattijo said is the refusal to fill up the seats vacated by the death or retirement of judges that eventually left some zones of the country without anyone within the confines of the Supreme Court. This might not have impeded the workings of the court nor the quality of its judgement. However, in times of political contestations such as we had this year and matters reaching the Supreme Court for adjudication, these lapses could be willing tools in the hands of conspiracy theorists whenever some judgement of the Supreme Court did not favour them.

In the long run, Dattijo laments leaving the Supreme Court dissatisfied. He moans, ‘My lords, distinguished invitees, ladies and gentlemen, it is obvious that the judiciary I am exiting from is far from the one l voluntarily joined and desired to serve and be identified with. The institution has become something else’. There is yet a ray of hope as Dattijo alludes that the situation can be turned around if we all put our heads to it. He said, ‘The duty to revive the institution remains a collective one. We must persist.’

Dattijo’s valedictory speech is a sad commentary on the Nigerian judiciary. It is even sadder that as it is constituted it cannot help itself.

Short-term measures could include the immediate filling of the vacated seats in the court and increased funding for the running and upkeep of the court.

The longtime venture capital investor honed it through decades of experience helping early-stage tech companies like YouTube and Instagram grow into industry giants. He repeatedly watched CEOs get stuck when trying to choose between two options, and it taught him a lesson.

“If you find yourself deciding between only two choices, maybe you need to widen the aperture,” Botha said on Sequoia’s “Crucible Moments” podcast, in a recent episode featuring billionaire entrepreneur Jack Dorsey. “Is there a third or fourth option that you haven’t even considered that you need to throw into the mix to really test whether that is the right path?”

He cited Dorsey’s own payments business Block, where Botha sits on the company’s board, as an example. In 2011, the business was known as Square, and it was struggling to expand past its namesake product — a credit and debit card scanner that could plug into a smartphone’s headphone jack.

One of the company’s first attempts to broaden its customer base was an app called Square Wallet, which customers could use to pay Square merchants. Another was a $25 million deal with Starbucks: The coffee giant invested in the company, and in return, carried out all in-store transactions with the startup’s technology.

Both ideas were meant to help the company reach more people. Merchants may have known about its credit card scanner, but everyday buyers didn’t need it, Dorsey said.

Neither garnered much initial traction. Dorsey could have waited for a larger sample size of results — but instead, he chose to toss another initiative into the mix, tasking a group of Block employees with brainstorming new options.

One of those ideas was to develop a low-cost way for people “to send money as easy as sending an email,” Dorsey said. The company officially launched Square Cash, now known as Cash App, in October 2013.

The payment service, a competitor to PayPal and Venmo, proved stronger than the other options: Block pulled Square Wallet from the store six months after Cash App was released, and let its Starbucks partnership expire at the end of 2015. The company later discovered that it’d lost $71 million paying transaction costs to credit card companies while processing Starbucks payments.

Block now has a market cap of $26.82 billion, as of Wednesday afternoon, and Cash App is responsible for half of its revenue, Botha said. Having a third option helped Block cut what wasn’t working, and invest in projects that helped make the company profitable.

This method is backed by science: On average, people are 22% more likelyto choose the strongest option when they compare all their options at once, rather than examining each one sequentially, according to 2017 research.

That holds true for both big and small decisions — whether you’re choosing between colleges, laptops or pizza restaurants, the study found.

 

CNBC

After 47 years in the judiciary, Musa Dattijo Muhammad took a bow on Friday, October 27, 2023. The high and mighty attended his valedictory session which has refused to leave the media space long after His Lordship thanked his audience for their time and patience. It’s been a while that a retiring judge hit the nail on the head the way he did.

Just weeks back, Chidi Odinkalu, human rights lawyer, penned the hard-hitting piece, ‘A Captured Temple of Justice’, where he highlighted what could ordinarily pass for as the dark days of the judiciary. From a hall in Abuja, the voice of Dattijo reverberated across the land. In this article, we analysed seven highlights of the judge’s speech.

ABSOLUTE POWER

The judge frowned over what he referred to as the concentration of too much powers in the hands of one man. He said although the CJN has a deputy, a position he once occupied, the experience is not different from that of a deputy governor who can only be relevant if the governor wants him to be.
“As presently structured, the CJN is Chairman of the National Judicial Council NJC which oversees both the appointment and discipline of judges, he is equally Chair of the Federal Judicial Service Commission (FJSC), the National Judicial Institute (NJI) the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee (LPPC) that appoints Senior Advocates of Nigeria. In my considered opinion, the oversight functions of these bodies should not rest on an individual alone. A person with absolute powers, it is said, corrupts easily and absolutely. As Chair of NJC,FJSC, NJI and LPPC, appointments as council, board and committee members are at his pleasure. He neither confers with fellow justices nor seeks their counsel or input on any matter related to these bodies. He has both the final and the only say.

“The CJN has power to appoint 80 percent of members of the council and 60 percnt of members of FJSC. The same applies to NJI and LPPC. Such enormous powers are effortlessly abused. This needs to change. Continued denial of the existence of this threatening anomaly weakens effective judicial oversight in the country.
By the provision of Paragraph 20 of Part One of the Third Schedule to the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as amended, the NJC shall comprise the following Members: the Chief Justice of Nigeria, who shall be the Chairman; the next most senior Justice of the Supreme Court who shall be the Deputy Chairman. Regrettably, the next most senior justice of the Supreme Court like Deputy Governors of State, shorn of any official function except at the pleasure of the Governor, is neither consulted on anything nor does he have any official function. His job as No. 2 is purely as the CJN pleases. It is incumbent that the system provides for more inclusion and consultation among the stakeholders.”

DANGER FOR DEMOCRACY

Dattijo expressed displeasure that two geopolitical zones – North Central and South East – no longer have representation on the bench of the highest court in the land. For him, no excuse is tenable for such development.
“When I exit today, the North Central zone that I represent ceases to have any representation until such a time new appointments are made. Ejembi Eko JSC who also represented the zone retired on the 23rd of May, 2022. It has been a year and five months now. There has not been any replacement. With the passing of my lord, Chima Centus Nweze, JSC on 29th July 2023,the South East no longer has any presence at the Supreme Court. My lord, Sylvester Nwali Ngwuta JSC died on 7th March 2021. There has not been any appointment in his stead for the South East.”
“To ensure justice and transparency in presidential appeals from the lower court, all geo-political zones are required to participate in the hearing. It is therefore dangerous for democracy and equity for two entire regions to be left out in the decisions that will affect the generality of Nigerians. This is not what our laws envisage. Although it can be posited that no one expected the sudden passing of Nweze JSC, yet, it has been two years and seven months since previous Justice from the South East died and no appointment was made. Ditto for the replacement of Eko JSC of North central who exited nearly two years ago. Sidi Bage JSC, now his Royal Highness the Emir of Lafia, from the North Central, had earlier voluntarily retired. He equally is yet to be replaced. Also,it was clear ab-initio that I would be leaving the court this day on attaining the statutory age of 70. It is then not in doubt that there has been sufficient time for suitable replacements to have been appointed. This is yet to occur.”

POOR SALARIES

According to him, from the time former President Muhammadu Buhari assumed office till he departed few months ago, over N70 billion had been added to the annual budget of the judiciary, but the effect is not seen on the lives of judges. He could not understand the condition that made it possible for the Registrar of Supreme Court to earn higher salary than judges.

“In 2015 when President Muhammadu Buhari became the president, the budgetary allocation to the judiciary was #70 billion. In the 2018 Appropriation Bill submitted to the National Assembly, the President allocated N100 billion to the judiciary.

“The legislature increased it to N110 billion; N10 billion above the N100 billion appropriated for the 2017 fiscal year. At the end of Buhari’s tenure in May 2023 judiciary’s allocation had increased to N130 billion. That is an increase from N70 to N130 billion in 8 years. The present government has allocated an additional sum of 35 billion naira to the judiciary for the current financial year making the amount of money accessible by the judiciary to 165 billion naira. More than 85 percent of the amount appropriated by the 10th Assembly has so far been released to the judiciary. It is envisaged that the additional 35 billion naira will equally be released by the present government.
“Notwithstanding the phenomenal increases in the sums appropriated and released to the judiciary, Justices and officers welfare and the quality of service the judiciary render have continued to decline. It may interest one to know that the Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court earns more than the Justices. While she earns N1.2m per month, justices take home N751,000 in a month. The CJN on his part takes home #400,000 plus. The salary of a Justice, curiously, drops rather than increases when he gets the added responsibility of being a CJN.”

LOBBYING FOR APPOINTMENTS

More troubling for Dattijo is the manner of recruitment which places nepotism over merit. Friends, mistresses, family members have unfair advantage over those who have meaningful things to offer.
The process of the appointment of Judges and quality of judgments of courts. A couple of years ago, appointment to the bench was strictly on merit. Sound knowledge of the law, integrity, honour, and hard work distinguished those who were elevated. Lobbying was unheard of. I never lobbied, not at any stage of my career, to secure any appointment or elevation. As much as possible the most qualified men and women were appointed. That can no longer be sad about appointments to the bench.

The judiciary must be uniquely above board. Appointments should not be polluted by political, selfish, and sectional interests. The place of merit, it must be urged, cannot be over-emphasized.
Public perceptions of the judiciary have over the years become witheringly scornful and monstrously critical. It has been in the public space that court officials and judges are easily bribed by litigants to obviate delays and or obtain favourable judgments.

Recently, fresh allegations have been made that children and other relatives of serving and retired judges and justices are being appointed into judicial offices at the expense of more qualified candidates lacking in such privilege and backing. It is asserted that the process of appointment to judicial positions are deliberately conducted to give undue advantage to the “children,spouses, and mistresses” of serving and retired judges and managers of judicial offices.”

LAWAN & UZODIMMA

Most recently, cases involving Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State and former Senate President Ahmad Lawan sparked controversy. In Lawan’s case, he sought but lost the presidential ticket of the ruling party but lost to President Bola Tinubu.

Bashir Machina, a local politician in Lawan’s Yobe constituency, won the senatorial ticket which the former senate president conceded in order to contest the presidential primary. Machina resisted pressure to hand the ticket to Lawan until the court pronounced him the senatorial candidate.
For Uzodimma, he came fourth in the 2019 governorship election, but headed to the court which eventually declared him winner.

The retired judge made allusion to this in his valedictory speech.

“At the Court of Appeal, it is also asserted, presiding Justices are now being appointed out of turn. And there is the further issue of the unpredictable nature of recent decisions of the courts as well. A number of respected senior members of the bar inter alia, citing the Ahmed Lawan, the former President of the Senate and the Imo Governorship appeals, claim that decisions of even the apex court have become unpredictable. It is difficult to understand how and where, by these decisions, the judicial pendulum swings. It was not so before, they contend.
In some quarters the view is strongly held that filth and intrigues characterize the institution these days! Judges are said to be comfortable in companies they never would have kept in the past. It is being insinuated that some judicial officers even campaign for the politicians. It cannot be more damnifying!”

DEPLETION OF JUDGES

“The conversation about the diminishing number of justices at the Supreme Court has become a refrain. As I bow out today, the number is further reduced to 10 against the Constitutional requirement of 21 justices. That this avoidable depletion has affected and will further affect the court and litigants is stating the obvious.
“We are in an election season where the Election Tribunals and appellate courts are inundated with all manner of petitions and appeals. The Supreme Court is the final court in the Presidential, Governorship and National Assembly election appeals. Yet, there are only 10 justices left to determine these matters. Constitutionally, each of these appeals requires a panel of seven justices to sit on them. When a panel of seven justices is constituted to sit on a particular appeal, only three justices are left out. Even when regular appeals are being heard in the Supreme Court, a panel of five justices is required to sit.

“We must not forget that the Court, being the highest in the land, receives all manner of appeals from the court below. Presently, there is neither limit nor distinction to the manner of appeals that come to the apex court. Again, beside election matters which are seasonal, the Supreme Court’s docket is overflowing with civil and criminal appeals, some of which took many years to arrive. Most of these are still pending. Several have not even been assigned hearing dates. The court also exercises original jurisdiction.
“As the justices who hear these matters are grossly overstretched, unable to meet the demands of their onerous assignment, the litigants who approach the court seeking justice are left in limbo; waiting endlessly for justice to be served. These ,as I have said before, are avoidable.”

NO CHANGES

“Valedictory session after valedictory session lapses and challenges that should be nipped are restated to no avail. Why the silence and seeming contentment?”

 

Netanyahu says the Gaza war has entered a new stage and will be 'long and difficult'

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the nation Saturday night that the military has opened a “second stage” in the war against Hamas by sending ground forces into Gaza and expanding attacks from the ground, air and sea.

Casting the war as a fight for his country’s very survival, he warned that the assault would only intensify ahead of a broad ground invasion into the territory.

“There are moments in which a nation faces two possibilities: to do or die,” Netanyahu said. “We now face that test and I have no doubt how it will end: We will be the victors. We will do and we will be the victors.”

The bombardment — described by Gaza residents as the most intense of the war — knocked out most communications in the territory late Friday and largely cut off the besieged enclave’s 2.3 million people from the world. Communications were restored to many people in Gaza early Sunday, according to the telecoms company, Internet-access advocacy group NetBlocks.org and confirmation on the ground.

Highlighting the ongoing attacks, the Israeli military released grainy images showing tank columns moving slowly in open areas of Gaza, many apparently near the border, and said warplanes bombed dozens of Hamas tunnels and underground bunkers. The underground sites are a key target in Israel’s campaign to crush the territory’s ruling group after its bloody incursion into Israel three weeks ago.

The escalation ratcheted up domestic pressure on Israel’s government to secure the release of dozens of hostages seized in the Oct. 7 rampage by Hamas, when militants stormed from Gaza into nearby Israeli towns and gunned down civilians and soldiers. The unprecedented attack during a major Jewish holiday initiated a war between Israel and Hamas that could spread into a broader Mideast conflict.

Desperate family members met with Netanyahu on Saturday and expressed support for an exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, a swap floated by the top Hamas leader in Gaza.

Netanyahu told the nationally televised news conference that Israel is determined to bring back all the hostages, and maintained that the expanding ground operation “will help us in this mission.” He said he couldn’t reveal everything that is being done due to the sensitivity and secrecy of the efforts.

“This is the second stage of the war, whose objectives are clear: to destroy the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas and bring the hostages home,” he said in his first time taking questions from journalists since the war began.

He didn’t address calls for a cease-fire, but in a speech peppered with references to centuries of Jewish history and military conflicts, made clear his view that Israel’s future depends on its success against “enemy” forces.

“Our heroic soldiers have one supreme goal: to destroy the murderous enemy and ensure our existence in our land. We have always said, ‘Never again‘” he said. “‘Never again’ is now.”

Netanyahu also acknowledged that the Oct. 7 “debacle,” in which more than 1,400 people were killed, would need a thorough investigation, adding that “everyone will have to answer questions, including me.”

The Israeli military said it was gradually expanding its ground operations inside Gaza, while stopping short of calling it an all-out invasion.

“We are proceeding with the stages of the war according to an organized plan,” said the chief military spokesman, Daniel Hagari. The comments hinted at a strategy of a staged escalation, instead of a massive and overwhelming offensive.

Early in the war, Israel amassed hundreds of thousands of troops along the border. Until now, troops had conducted brief nightly ground incursions before returning to Israel.

Despite the Israeli offensive, Palestinian militants have continued firing rockets into Israel, with the constant sirens in southern Israel a reminder of the threat.

The Palestinian death toll in Gaza rose Saturday to just over 7,700 people since the war began, with 377 deaths reported since late Friday, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Most of those killed have been women and minors, the ministry said.

Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra told reporters that the disruption of communications has “totally paralyzed” the health network. Residents had no way of calling ambulances, and emergency teams were chasing the sounds of artillery barrages and airstrikes.

An estimated 1,700 people remain trapped beneath the rubble, according to the health ministry, which has said it bases its estimates on distress calls it received.

Some civilians were using their bare hands to pull injured people from the rubble and loading them into personal cars or donkey carts. In a video posted by local news media, Palestinians sprinted down a street with a wounded man covered in the dust of a building’s collapse. “Ambulance! Ambulance!” the men shouted as they shoved the stretcher into a truck and shouted, “Go! Go!”

Some Gaza residents traveled by foot or car to check on relatives and friends. “The bombs were everywhere, the building was shaking,” said Hind al-Khudary, a journalist in central Gaza and one of a few people with cellphone service. “We can’t reach anyone or contact anyone. I do not know where my family is.”

Israel says its strikes target Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that the militants operate from among civilians, putting them in danger.

The World Health Organization appealed to “the humanity in all those who have the power to do so to end the fighting now” in Gaza. “There are more wounded every hour. But ambulances cannot reach them in the communications blackout. Morgues are full. More than half of the dead are women and children,” it said.

Palestinians say the war also robbed them of the funeral rites that long have offered mourners some dignity and closure. Overcrowded cemeteries have compelled families to dig up long-buried bodies and deepen the holes.

More than 1.4 million people across Gaza have fled their homes, nearly half crowding into U.N. schools and shelters, following repeated warnings by the Israeli military that they would be in danger if they remained in northern Gaza.

A large number of residents have not evacuated to the south, in part because Israel has also bombarded targets in so-called safe zones where conditions are increasingly dire. Food and water supplies were running out. Israel knocked out electricity early in the war.

Humanitarian workers say the trickle of aid Israel has allowed to enter from Egypt in the past week is a tiny fraction of what is needed. Gaza hospitals have been scrounging for fuel to run emergency generators that power incubators and other life-saving equipment.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, which runs a network of shelters and schools for nearly half the displaced Gaza residents, has lost contact with most staff, spokeswoman Juliette Touma said, and coordinating aid efforts was now “extremely challenging.”

The intensified air and ground campaign raised new concerns about hostages dragged into Gaza. On Saturday, hundreds of relatives gathered in Tel Aviv and demanded that the government put the return of their loved ones ahead of military objectives.

In comments likely to inflame these tensions, Hamas’ top leader in Gaza, Yehia Sinwar, said the Palestinian militant groups “are ready immediately” to release all hostages if Israel releases all Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, dismissed the offer as “psychological terror.”

In Cairo, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi said his government was working to de-escalate the conflict through talks with the warring parties to release prisoners and hostages. On Saturday, he spoke with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, his office said.

Guterres in a statement said he was “surprised by an unprecedented escalation of the bombardments and their devastating impacts” in Gaza.

Among many, impatience was growing. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told hundreds of thousands of people at a pro-Palestinian rally in Istanbul that his country was preparing to proclaim Israel a “war criminal” for its actions in Gaza. He did not give details.

Israel’s foreign minister said he ordered the return of Israel’s diplomatic mission from Turkey to reassess ties.

The overall number of deaths in Gaza and Israel far exceeds the combined toll of all four previous Israel-Hamas wars, estimated at around 4,000.

The conflict has threatened to ignite a wider war across the region. Arab nations — including U.S. allies and ones that have reached peace deals or normalized ties with Israel — have raised increasing alarm over a potential ground invasion.

 

AP

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukrainian drone struck Russian nuclear waste facility risking disaster, Moscow says

A Ukrainian drone crashed into a nuclear waste storage facility at the Kursk power plant in western Russia on Thursday, damaging its walls, Russia's foreign ministry said on Saturday, calling on other governments to condemn "an act of nuclear terrorism".

A ministry statement said Ukraine must have known that its actions could have caused a full-scale nuclear catastrophe that would have affected many countries.

"We call on all governments to issue a strong condemnation of Kyiv's barbaric actions, which are extremely dangerous and could lead to irreparable consequences," said foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

Russia and Ukraine, which both operate nuclear power plants, have regularly accused each other of risking a nuclear calamity with irresponsible attacks, and the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog - the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - has been monitoring the situation in Ukraine particularly closely.

Moscow said on Friday that it had thwarted Thursday's drone attack and two news outlets said an explosion had damaged the facade of a warehouse storing nuclear waste. Saturday's statement was the first official confirmation of the damage.

Zakharova said one explosive-packed drone had damaged the nuclear waste facility's walls while another two had hit an administrative building complex.

"According to preliminary data, the drones used in the attack on the nuclear power plant used components supplied by Western countries," she said, adding that such an attack must have had the permission of Ukraine's allies or possibly been ordered by them.

The Kursk plant, located in a region which borders Ukraine, said after the attack that there were no casualties and that radiation levels and operations were normal.

Ukrainian officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. Kyiv generally declines to confirm or deny military operations on Russian territory.

Russia in July complained that a Ukrainian drone had struck an apartment building in Kurchatov, a town built on the banks of a cooling pond for the Kursk nuclear power station.

Russia's FSB security service said in August last year that security around nuclear facilities had been beefed up after Ukrainian saboteurs had destroyed electricity lines supplying the Kursk plant, temporarily disrupting its functioning.

Kursk is one of several Russian regions that have regularly come under drone attack in the course of the 20-month war. The governor of Kursk reported a previous drone attack on Kurchatov on Sept. 1.

Thursday night's incident came a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said a Russian drone attack in Ukraine's western Khmelnitskyi region had probably targeted the area's nuclear power station.

The IAEA said that attack had destroyed "numerous windows" at the site but had not affected the Ukrainian plant's operations or its connection to the electricity grid.

Reuters was unable to independently confirm either incident.

** Belarus' Lukashenko says Ukraine-Russia war at stalemate, urges talks

Russia and Ukraine are locked in a stalemate on the frontlines of their war and the two sides need to sit down and negotiate an end to the conflict, Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian leader of Belarus and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said over the weekend.

"There are enough problems on both sides and in general the situation is now seriously stalemate: no one can do anything and substantively strengthen or advance their position," Lukashenko said.

"They're there head-to-head, to the death, entrenched. People are dying."

Russian forces have kept pushing this week near the ruined Donetsk city of Avdiivka suffering heavy losses, the U.S. White House said, but the vast frontline in Ukraine has moved little in the past year despite Kyiv's gruelling months-long offensive.

Lukashenko, who has provided his country's territory as a launch pad for Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, said that Ukraine's demands for Russia to quit its territory needs to be resolved at the negotiating table "so nobody dies".

"We need to sit down at the negotiating table and come to an agreement," Lukashenko said in a question and answer video posted on the website of the Belarusian state news agency BelTA.

"As I once said: no preconditions are needed. The main thing is that the 'stop' command is given."

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy reiterated on Saturday at a gathering of over 60 national security advisers that his 10-point peace plan, which includes calls for the restoration of Ukraine's territorial integrity, is the only way to end the war.

 

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russia displays Western shells used by Ukraine to attack civilians

A senior Russian diplomat at the UN has shown fragments of Western-supplied shells and missiles that he claimed Ukraine used to attack civilians in Donbass and other Russian regions.

Speaking at a regular Security Council briefing concerning Ukraine on Friday, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, described the ordnance pieces as “physical evidence of how Western-supplied weapons are being actively used by Ukrainians to attack civilian infrastructure.”

He showcased what he said was debris from a US-made HIMARS missile that hit a regional administration building in Russia’s Kherson region last September, killing three people and injuring several others.

Polyansky went on to present a much larger fragment which he claimed was part of a Storm Shadow long-range missile with “a discernible inscription ‘Made in France’.” He said it had been used by Kiev in June to strike a bridge linking the northern part of the Crimean peninsula with the mainland. This link, he added, was crucial for transporting food and other vital supplies. Storm Shadow missiles were supplied to Ukraine by the UK.

He also showed what was allegedly a piece of a HIMARS missile that killed one civilian and wounded 11 others in a Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk in July. Another fragment of the US-made munition the diplomat displayed was said to have come from the shelling of Makeyevka, a town near Donetsk.

“Look at these fragments and imagine them being scattered around at a huge speed,” he said, addressing his British colleagues in particular. “Look here. You want people to keep silent about this,” he added.

Polyansky also stated that while Ukraine has been targeting civilians in Donbass since 2014, when large-scale hostilities erupted in the region following a Western-backed coup in Kiev, “the ‘civilized Western world’ has [long] been hiding behind a handy paradigm” that civilians there “had shelled themselves.”

According to the data provided by the Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC) in the Donetsk People’s Republic, more than 4,700 civilians, including 139 children, have been killed in the region since February 2022. According to the now-defunct JCCC in the Lugansk People’s Republic, Ukrainian attacks claimed the lives of 192 people between February 2022 and February 2023.

** Russian air defense systems destroy 36 Ukrainian drones over Black Sea, Crimea

Kiev tried to attack targets on Russian territory with 36 drones, they were destroyed by air defense systems over the Black Sea and the northwestern part of Crimea, Russia’s Defense Ministry told reporters.

"On the night of October 29, [air defense systems] prevented an attempt by the Kiev regime to carry out a terrorist attack by aircraft-type UAVs on facilities on the territory of the Russian Federation. On-duty air defense systems destroyed 36 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles over the Black Sea and the northwestern part of the Crimean peninsula," the ministry said.

 

Reuters/RT/Tass