THAT SNEAKY SELF SERVING BILL BY LAGOS ASSEMBLY

There are claims that Lagos Assembly has reintroduced a bill giving its speaker and deputy speaker life pension. IF this is true then Lagosians better sit up o! How can a speaker and his deputy receive a house each cars( the speaker may even get a pilot car) after they have left office. The revenue mobilization and fiscal commission already allocates severance pay and entitlements to every member of the house. Why try to manipulate and amend the law just to suit the greed of two people? This had better not be true o!

 Obasa

Lagos State House of Assembly has re-introduced a bill seeking an amendment to the state’s Pension Law that would give life pension to both the Speaker and Deputy Speaker.

The latest attempt to give life pension to presiding officers of the Assembly is coming more than a year after a futile bid to amend the state’s Pension Law. The bid was dropped following public outcry.

Opinion leaders and residents of the state had condemned the amendment, when it first came up shortly before the end of the Seventh Assembly in 2015.

The bill titled: “A Bill for A Law to Amend the Payment of Pensions and Other Fringe Benefits to Public Office Holders in Lagos State and for Connected Purposes”, seeks to amend the state Public Office Holders’ Pension Law (2007) by accommodating the Assembly’s presiding officers.

The existing law only provides pensions for former governors and the deputy governors.

Unlike the first attempt which was widely criticised by Lagosians, the current bill which had passed first reading was not publicised. It was gathered that the plan was to ensure that it was passed without attracting public attention.

A lawmaker who pleaded not to be named said the Assembly leadership and some lawmakers were working hard to ensure that the law was passed within the coming weeks.

A copy of the bill obtained showed the various sections proposed for amendment and the replacement of the Schedule of the Principal law with a new Schedule.

The bill which provides that the law will be cited as the Public Office Holder (Payment of Pension) (Amendment) Law 2016, proposed an amendment of Section 6 of the Principal Law which defines public office holder. The Principal law defined Public office holder as governor and deputy governor.

The amendment bill states as follows: “Section 6 of the Principal Law is amended by deleting the meaning of Public office holder and replacing it with public office holder means the Governor, Deputy Governor, Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly.”

In part A of the new schedule proposed to replace the schedule in the principal bill, the governor and deputy governor will receive 50 per cent of their annual basic salary but the allowances and fringe benefits in part B (i) cover the governor, deputy governor, speaker and deputy speaker.

These include accommodation – a one residential house for the public office holder at any location of their choice in Lagos State; furniture – payable every five years en bloc; and transport – one car for the speaker and one pilot car, while the deputy speaker will be provided with one car to be provided by the state.

According to the proposed amendment, the speaker and the deputy speaker will also get 10 per cent of their annual basic salary as car maintenance allowance, and another 10 per cent of their annual basic salary as entertainment allowance.

NCC gives operators permission to raise tariffs

The Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC) has directed mobile operators to initiate a new data tariff regime from December 1, 2016 in what is effectively a price increase. Ultimately this would lead to Nigerians who use the internet to pay more for the use of data since the operators would not hesitate to pass the costs to the consumers. The leadership at the NCC wants Nigerians to believe that data in Nigeria is the cheapest in the world. This hardly true since in some parts of the world subscription is much cheaper than what obtains in Nigeria.
There appears to be a desperate scramble to raise taxes by various commissions that are controlled by the Federal Government. The tragedy about it all is that these costs are already being passed as some of the operators have already announced that they would be reviewing data costs at the beginning of December. 
Critics of the NCC have already hammered at them for not being able to caution the operators about shoddy services, but they are giving them the go ahead to raise prices. 

Professor Garba Danbatta Vice Chairman NCC

Ebonyi and Rice politics

The Ebonyi State Government allocated  land to the members of its state executive council.Governor David Umahi’ a policy to involve every segment of the society in massive rice production.The Commissioner for Agriculture and Natural Resources, Uchenna Orji, led the team comprising agric extension workers and officials of IFAD to carry out the exercise. 140 hectares of land has been distributed to the commissioners and some other plots of land was given to other citizens of the state who the governor deems fits to grow rice for the state. Already the governor has come under criticism for giving his lieutenants so much land since it is not really clear whether they are able to grow the crop specified and will in fact have the time to supervise cultivation on the farms and attend to state matters simultaneously. Ebonyi has also banned the sale of imported rice in the state an activity that could be difficult to sustain if the prices and quantities of the rice produced by the state are not competitive. 

Governor David Umahi  

Did Africa really benefit from an Obama White House?

So what did Nigerians benefit from Barack Obama's White House? What was all the excitement about the first black man in that White House? Beyond inspiration and feel good situation I fail to see what all the noise and excitement was about! When he came to African he chose Ghana. I for one got to see him live on Ghana Television while I was speaking at a conference there. I remember vividly one of his most interesting quotes which he used to pillage the dictators of the black continent: "Africa does not need strong men, Africa needs strong institutions. The Ghanaian parliament could not stop clapping, we used the story of Obama and his family visit to slave castles on the Ghana coast line about how tears of welled up in the eyes of the members of the entourage when the guide at the castles recounted how the slaves where chained, while they awaited their ships that would take them to the new world. Looking at Africa generally, all the Obama White House succeeded in doing was refocusing the relationship between America and Africa. This is something that Donald Trump will easily reverse.
According to Chatham House,  the US-Africa Business Forum (USABF), which met for the second time in New York on 21 September, provided a platform to deepen business and financial ties between the US and Africa, and is the culmination of efforts to diversify Washington’s focus away from humanitarian concerns and counterterrorism. Emphasizing the business opportunities that Africa offers could be Barack Obama’s key Africa legacy, equivalent to the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) for Bill Clinton and the President’s Emergency Program on AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) or the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) for George W Bush.  

The USABF is co-hosted by US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and Michael Bloomberg. President Obama, President Jacob Zuma of South Africa and President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria are attending, and almost 50 African heads of state or government have been invited. Up to 100 US and African corporations will be participating, in addition to numerous global CEOs, and new announcements of both private sector investments and government initiatives will be made. The forum will focus on seven sectors important to African economies; finance, capital investment, infrastructure, power and energy, agriculture, consumer goods and information communication technology.

It is no coincidence that President Obama wanted a second USABF before he ends his presidency. The USABF was the most successful part of the 2014 US−Africa Leaders’ Summit in Washington DC – the largest gathering of African heads of state and government ever convened by an American president. It resulted in announcements of billions of dollars of investment in Africa, and US-Africa trade has subsequently grown significantly, albeit from a low base. During the second Obama administration new initiatives such as Power Africa, Trade Africa and the President’s Advisory Council on Doing Business in Africa have been launched. The Power Africa initiative has leveraged nearly $43 billion in commitments from over 120 public and private sector partners and the Trade Africa partnership (with an initial focus on the East African Community)  and saw a 24 per cent increase in exports of goods from the EAC to the US in 2013−14. There has also been the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, which met in 2014 in Morocco and Kenya in 2015, and an increase in trade missions. And not only does the Corporate Council on Africa in Washington DC now promote African trade, but recently the US Chamber of Commerce has finally begun taking Africa more seriously.  

The USABF comes a year after AGOA was renewed for another decade (to 2025), and is timed to follow the 2016 annual AGOA Forum in Washington DC. Although Africa remains a relatively small player in world trade, representing just 3.3 per cent of global exports, its share is growing. AGOA and defining the agreements that will succeed it are likely to be an important agenda item both for the USABF and for future US administrations, and will have implications across global trade negotiations. Frameworks like the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) being negotiated between the EU and US will impact the US−Africa trade relationship, as do the reciprocal economic partnership agreements (EPAs) that the EU has struck with most African nations. As the EPAs give Europe advantages over the US, Washington may seek to shape TTIP negotiations so as not to cede long-term commercial advantage to European firms trading with Africa. This has implications too for a post-Brexit United Kingdom, as London is also considering its own trade relationships in Africa outside the EPAs.

The USABF is meeting at an opportune moment for both African states and American businesses.  Many African leaders, confronted by slower growth rates, are once again reappraising their international partnerships. Diversification is the preferred strategy for many, and the US is clearly part of the calculation for most (although South Africa is increasingly hostile to the US and seems to be pulling in the opposite direction). At the same time, the longstanding pattern of US corporate investment being limited to extractives – and some broader engagement in South Africa − is changing. Major players in corporate America, such as Blackstone, General Electric and Johnson and Johnson are developing long-term investment strategies across the continent, complementing Exxon’s and Chevron’s many decades of engagement. Other companies are testing the waters, assessing whether investing in Africa is profitable and possible given tightening US and European regulatory regimes.

When Obama was elected as the first African-American US president, some thought that Africa would become a more important focus of overall US foreign policy. It was never a realistic prospect, given the range and importance of US global strategic interests. But President Obama has been engaged in African issues, visiting Africa twice during his second term of office − Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania in 2013 and Kenya and the African Union headquarters in Ethiopia in 2015. He may yet visit Nigeria before his presidency ends, and will meet President Buhari in New York. In addition to improving bilateral relations with Kenya and Nigeria, President Obama’s mediation efforts have helped transitions in recent years in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso, although he clearly regrets how poorly prepared  his NATO allies, Britain and France, were  in their Libyan intervention, given the instability that followed.

And perhaps most importantly, Obama recognized that in addition to good governance and aid, Africa can only flourish if there is more trade and investment into the continent. Reorienting US−Africa policy towards trade, and putting in place practical initiatives, such as the USABF, to build relationships and encourage investment, will be the key Africa legacy of the Obama administration.

https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/trade-not-aid-obama-s-africa-legacy 

 

Donald Trump was once friends with the Clintons, even donated to Hillary's senatorial campaigns!

 

Trump, Hillary and Bill Clinton with a friend at an event in 1990s

                               

Donald Trump realized that golf was his entree if he wanted to pal around with Bill Clinton, whom he considered a kindred spirit in some ways — a great man who attracted jealous haters. “Bill is kind of Trump with a dictionary,” one author who has written about New York real estate says. Trump had been obsequious in trying to lure Ronald and Nancy Reagan to his business empire, and tried just as hard with the Clintons. He happened to have his own country club with a golf course in Westchester, which he bought out of foreclosure in the late 1990s. He closed the club in 1999 to redevelop it from top to bottom and reopened it as Trump National Golf Club in 2002. It was six miles from the Clintons’ house, and Trump could play with him, ingratiating himself further by hanging photos of Bill on the wall. As of June, Bill still had a locker at Trump’s golf club.

Trump once told me that he rebuilt the club, in part, because he knew Bill Clinton would need a place to play. As Don Van Natta Jr., an ESPN senior writer, wrote in his book about presidents and golf, “First Off the Tee,” Trump enjoyed playing with the ex-president. “He’s got a lot of golf talent, but he really likes those mulligans,” Trump told Van Natta. “If he misses a shot, he wants to take another crack at it. It’s like life.”

Trump greased the wheels of his relationship with the ex-president and the senator, giving the Clinton Foundation a $100,000 gift from his own foundation. According to “Trump Revealed,” by Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher, Trump donated to Hillary’s Senate war chest six times between 2002 and 2009, for a total of $4,700, and between 1999 and 2012, he switched his registration among the Republican, Democratic and Independence parties seven times.

The friendship, on both sides, was a transaction. Not personal, as they say in the “The Godfather” — just business. Trump’s life in New York was all about promoting the brand and making money for the family business. It was the same for the Clintons. A former Clinton White House official puts it more bluntly: “This was a classic Clinton go-where-the-money-is move.”

“They all played the same game in the same town with the same thing in mind,” says Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, who was invited to Trump’s third wedding and served prison time for tax fraud and other felony charges. “Better your relationships and build the business. It’s all about money and getting ahead and hedging your bets and playing the angles.”

Trump wasn’t on the dinner-party circuit. He lived in a narrow alternate universe called Trumpworld, and his favorite way to spend the evening was ordering a steak or cheeseburger (well done) from Fresco by Scotto, eating quickly and watching a sporting event on TV. “Trumpworld is a world he weaves for his own needs and desires, depending on what they are and when they are,” says Louise Sunshine, a former Trump Organization vice president, noting that Clintonworld is much broader and more global.

Though the Clintons might show up at some events and galas and friends’ birthday parties, they were never really around enough to become part of the society dinner-party circuit, either. When I asked Trump last summer to describe his relationship with the Clintons, he was neutral: “As a businessman, you have to get along with all politicians,” he said. “I wouldn’t say it was a close relationship.”

Hillary presents the trip to Trump’s wedding as a lark. “The dates worked,” a friend says. But some of her aides expressed surprise that she was going to such a gaudy affair; they believed Hillary rearranged her schedule because she thought Trump was a more important donor than he was.

Extracted from The New York Times Magazine.

A Brief History of Donald Trump and Bill Clinton’s Friendship

Before he ran for president, Donald Trump often defended his pal, Bill Clinton.

By Michele Gorman  

Donald Trump laughs with Bill Clinton and Billy Crystal during the 2008 Joe Torre Safe at Home Foundation Golf Classic at Trump National Golf Club in Briarcliff Manor, New York, on July 14, 2008. Clinton and Trump were once longtime friends. But they've distanced themselves now that both men are on opposite sides in the presidential election.Rick Odell/Getty

Despite recent rhetoric regarding the former U.S. president, years before he secured the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential election—a feat acknowledged Thursday—Donald Trump and Bill Clinton were longtime friends.
But now as a Republican contender, Trump is being criticized for his ties to the Clintons—Democrats and fellow New Yorkers who celebrated his 2005 marriage to Melania Knauss with him. Hillary Clinton was granted a front-row seat at the ceremony, and her husband later joined the reception at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. A snapshot taken of the Clintons and the newlywed Trumps has been widely circulated during the primary season; the wedding was dubbed the event that explains the 2016 election. During the first GOP debate in August, Trump said the couple “had no choice” but to attend his third wedding, because he had donated generously to the their charitable foundation, as well as to Clinton’s Senate campaigns and her first presidential bid. Never mind that their daughters, Ivanka Trump and Chelsea Clinton, are also known to be friends.

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Nine months ago, The Washington Post reported that on a private, casual phone call last spring, Bill Clinton encouraged Trump to play a larger role in the Republican Party. That conversation reportedly took place in May 2015, a month after Hillary Clinton declared her 2016 presidential bid and just weeks before Trump announced his.
Prior to his sweeping primary wins that began in February, Trump was known to defend the former president on multiple occasions. Meanwhile, Clinton has admitted the billionaire was “uncommonly nice to Hillary and me.”
“I like him. And I love playing golf with him,” Clinton said in a May 2012 interview with CNN, according to transcripts. He spoke highly of Trump, despite the real estate tycoon’s prominent role in the so-called “birther” movement, wherein he spent months publicly questioning President Barack Obama’s original birth certificate. Trump, speaking to Fox News earlier that same year, said he thought Clinton was “a really good guy.”
Donald Trump laughs with Bill Clinton and Billy Crystal during the 2008 Joe Torre Safe at Home Foundation Golf Classic at Trump National Golf Club in Briarcliff Manor, New York, on July 14, 2008. Clinton and Trump were once longtime friends. But they’ve distanced themselves now that both men are on opposite sides in the presidential election. Rick Odell/Getty
But Trump’s recent words regarding the 42nd president might make you think he no longer considers him a friend. The GOP candidate has stepped up attacks against both Clintons since early May, when his two remaining competitors, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, both dropped out of the race. Now, he’s eyeing a November general election matchup with Clinton, the Democratic front-runner who likely will be her party’s candidate. And the election season likely will only get uglier, as will his attacks against Bill Clinton.
But it wasn’t always like this. The Trump-Clinton relationship has evolved as the billionaire transitioned from a longtime private citizen to a first-time presidential contender.

The Lewinsky Scandal

Then. Clinton’s sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky took over the narrative of his presidency in January 1998. Seven months later, and days after Clinton admitted to his actions with the White House intern, Trump seemed to express sympathy in his view that Clinton should have refused to answer questions about his sex life.
“It’s a terrible thing for a president to take the Fifth Amendment, but he probably should’ve done it,” Trump said in an interview with CNBC in August 1998. “I don’t think he could’ve done any worse than what’s happened. It’s such an embarrassment to him.”
Then, a decade later, Trump repeated his views, saying the Lewinsky scandal was overblown.
“Look at the trouble Bill Clinton got into with something that was totally unimportant, and they tried to impeach him, which was nonsense,” the businessman said during an interview with CNN in October 2008. He continued, comparing what he called the “lies” then-President George W. Bush made about weapons of mass destruction that eventually led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq

You've been Trumped! Donald Trump does not keep his promises!

 In 2006,  Donald Trump bought the Menie Estate in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, creating a golf resort against the wishes of local residents You've Been Trumped, a documentary by British filmmaker Anthony Baxter has chronicled the golf resort's construction and the subsequent struggles between the locals in Aberdeen, Scotland. and Donald Trump. Despite promises of 6,000 jobs, in 2016, by his own admission, the golf course has created only 200 jobs!

Billionaire businessman and President-Elect of the United States,Donald Trump has received  roughly $382 million from his golf and resort revenue for the year 2015 alone. He has numerous other investments. His disclosure to the Federal Elections Commission which chronicles income and net worth of candidates states that $382million income comes from 18 golf courses located in different parts of the world. Some of them have controversy dogging their establishment.
Trump has promised the United States voters jobs. Can he come through? Or has he just Trumped the people that put him in office?
The United States President does not have a much power as it seems. A lot of the things that have been a source of outcry by Trump might not be that easy to implement. How does he, for instance: "bring our jobs back home?" The wall he said would be built between Mexico and United States would require the express approval of congress. There are major issues that the president just can't handle alone. 
Well the change and compromise has since started. President-elect Donald Trump said he would consider leaving in place certain parts of the Affordable Care Act, an indication of possible compromise after a campaign in which he pledged repeatedly to repeal the 2010 health-care law.
In his first interview since his election earlier this week, Mr. Trump said one priority was moving “quickly” on President Barack Obama’s signature health initiative, which Mr. Trump said has become so unworkable and expensive that “you can’t use it.”

Habits of successful Business Leaders: Do you dream, work towards your dreams, never take no for an answer/?

Success is an attitude not a condition. Successful leaders possess and exhibit certain qualities:

According to Brian Tracey, "All successful people, men and women alike, are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose".

So,

    i.  All successful people are big dreamers;

  ii.  They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every

       respect.

 iii.  Then they work every day toward their distant vision.

  A study, commissioned by electronics group, Sony Ericsson, and published in the 27 Jan, 2005 edition of the EDINBURGH EVENING NEWS which  surveyed 254 people in "progressive sectors" of the UK market., revealed the following:

 One fifth of businessmen and women spend around 25 hours per week dreaming up new business concepts, mainly outside the office, according to the a survey. This means eight weeks a year is spent on coming up with bright ideas. 

How do you spend your time?

Daryl R. Gibson, writing on the topic “Dreaming Big Dreams, and Making them Real”, 2003 made some remarkable statements.

"I've never been that good of a dreamer - at least while I'm asleep, but wake me up - and I really start to dream. My most vibrant dreams occur when I'm wide awake, thinking about a challenge; that's when I can actively visualize the answer - and that's when my dreams really come into their own.

Life needs daytime dreamers; in fact our world depends on them.

They have Passion

Every undertaking in life is difficult and you're going to have to put in extra work that you couldn't have predicted. That's where the passionate man has an edge.

Rajesh Jain, an Indian entrepreneur who founded and built IndiaWorld and sold it for USD $115 million, had this to say  about passion:

Passion is what comes from within, it is that fire and energy which can help the entrepreneur surmount even the most difficult of obstacles.

Passion is perhaps the single biggest "differentiator" for an entrepreneur. They like to do the impossible. In fact tell them that it can't be done and you find them trying to get it done. 

They Choose the People they listen to:

Few people recall that the 1990s were lean years for Donald Trump, who was on the verge of personal bankruptcy. As a successful businessman and a celebrity in his own right, naysayers were lining up to watch him fall. Did he? Of course not. Trump buckled his belt, dumped under-performing investments, raised revenues, and put himself back on top. What he didn't do was listen to people who were clamoring to watch him fall.

They have purpose:

If your leadership is not driven by purpose; other forces will drive it in circles:

Keys to a purpose driven leadership:

•    Defining your mission

•    Developing your vision

•    Setting objectives

•    Establishing values

•    Devising strategy

They are thinkers 

Thinking is the ability to use your mind to solve problems and make effective decisions. Successful people are thinkers.

Thinkers are usually involved in the following types of thinking:

Creative Thinking

The use of the mind to generate original ideas - the ability to conceive and develop new and unique ideas aimed at giving the team a competitive advantage.

 

Evolutionary Thinking

The use of the mind to generate new ideas  from other ideas, new solutions from previous ones with the new ones slightly improved over the old ones. Making something a little better here, a little better there gradually makes it something a lot better - even entirely different from the original. 

 

Synthetic Thinking

The ability to combine two or more existing ideas into a third and new idea.

Revolutionary Thinking

Generating ideas that are  completely different  from all existing ones.

 

They have Mentors

Almost all well-known, accomplished and successful people can identify people in their lives who acted as mentors. 

After the thinking process according to Paul Brown, they do the following:
A. Figure out what they really want to do.
B. Take a small step toward that goal.
C. Pause after taking that small step to see what they have learned.
D. Build off that learning and take another small step.
E. Pause after taking that step.
F. Build off what they learned in step two. And then take another small step…

  

 

 

 

From my leadership class!

• Activity is not accomplishment!
• Legacy is seeing what you have left behind function even better after you left that position.
• Great leaders multiply the skills by raising other great leaders.
• Leadership determines the success of an organization or country.
• When real leaders speak people listen.
• Real leadership requires self denial, not expensive adulation and riotous grandstanding 
• If you leave today, will you be missed? Would the system you put in place continue?
• How do you connect with the people who work for and with you? Is there a rapport?
• In your quest to keep growing do you take anyone with you? 
• Leadership does not have to be loud and attention-seeking, it can be quiet, yet achieving 
• The principles of leadership will fail if our value system is flawed. Leadership values ought to be a major attraction for followers. 
• When the leadership is cold,unexciting and uninspiring, the followers are left to their own devices.
• Charisma can be created in the mystical medium of rapid achievement that touches numerous lives.
• Intelligence can be sought in the confines of the needs of a majority . Meet needs and be intelligent.
• Stagnancy is the sickness of an idle mind. Progressive thoughts often lead to enduring achievement
• Problem solving is the fulcrum of effective leadership.  Those who consistently solve debilitating problems are the leaders of today!
• Problem solution is rooted in the creativity of man kind. The fertile mind sees vast opportunities of ingenuity in problems. Those who provide solutions lead.