The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) said it had commenced the e-ticketing for train services on the Abuja-Kaduna route.

Mr Fidet Okhiria, the NRC Managing Director, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Abuja that the process would be on test run for a week before its formal inauguration on January 20.

“We have commenced the e-ticketing for the Abuja -Kaduna train service today. We intend to test-run this process for about a week after which the formal inauguration will be done at the Ministry of Transportation on January 20.

“The essence of this e-ticketing is to enable people to access tickets easily with fewer hurdles and especially during this period of social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.

According to Okhiria, the e-ticketing platform will guarantee orderliness in purchasing of tickets and address some major security challenges in the country.

He said that the e-ticketing would also ensure that the database of all passengers boarding the train were captured in case of emergencies and for other purposes.

An e-ticket (short for electronic ticket) is stored in the airline/train’s reservation system and therefore eliminates the need for a printed ticket.

The passengers are expected to check in with a government issued photo ID (e.g., driver’s license, passport) to receive their boarding pass. (NAN)

Emmanuel was arrested for tweeting that he would “pay a Russian sniper to eliminate Buhari and Kyari”,

Solomon Akuma, the father of Emmanuel Akuma, a pharmacist, who has reportedly been detained by the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID) in Abuja for about nine months, has narrated to PREMIUM TIMES how the police ‘deceived’ him to get his son arrested.

The father, who is a senior pastor at the Truevine Evangelical Mission based in Delta State, said his son, a pharmacist intern with the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), was arrested on April 2, 2020, in Aba, Abia State.

The 29 years old Emmanuel was arrested for tweeting that he would “pay a Russian sniper to eliminate Buhari and Kyari”, apparently referring to President Muhammadu Buhari and his then Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, who later died of complications attributable to COVID-19 later in the year.

The tweet was in response to a Twitter post asking respondents what their next move would be if they got $1 million.

The father said he thereafter received a call from a person ”who disguised to be a person seeking to reward him for praying for him in the past.”

“It was me they used as bait to get to my son. They used me as their link. Someone must have dug up my profile and they found out that I was a pastor,” he said.

The cleric added, “Someone called me that I had prayed for him at a place. He said he wanted to honour me and that he and others would be coming on a particular date.

“They also said that they would visit me and give me an honorarium. I said I was not really aware of what they were talking about.

“They said I should not bother that they knew me as a pastor. I said, okay, no problem. They said I had once ministered in their church.

“I was not around at the time because I went for burial in my hometown. So I lodged in my in-law’s place.

“I said no problem, but something ministered to me that those guys were not what they said they were and as it turned out to be, they were policemen.”

He said he reluctantly agreed to meet with them and took them to his in-law’s place, where they “arrested everybody and collected all our phones at gunpoint, and marched us into a red jeep they parked outside.”

He said the policemen later used his phone number to call his son “telling him that his father lost the phone”.

“In fact, because of all the weapons they had I couldn’t react because I could not ascertain who they were,” he said.

The cleric said when his son arrived at the scene, the men immediately arrested him.

“So, at that point, they gave us back our phones, and they took him to the police station, down to Umuahia, to Enugu and the next day, they went to Abuja,” he said.

Detained

He said he initially took them for kidnappers until after two days when his son called to inform him that he had been detained at the FCID at Area 10 in Abuja.

He said he had to defy the COVID-19 lockdown that was in place at the time to travel to Abuja the following day.

The pharmacist was reportedly detained at the FCID in Abuja forabout three months before they eventually charged him with terrorism, sedition, criminal intimidation, and threat to the life of the President and arraigned him at the Federal High Court in Abuja.

His father told PREMIUM TIMES that he had yet to come to terms with how his son, a 2018 graduate of Pharmacy from the University of Port Harcourt, could be accused of such offences.

He said it had been hard to cope with the absence of Emmanuel, his only son among three siblings, for nine months.

He said the trial was being delayed by the police, ”who continued to keep his son in custody since April 2020”.

He said his son had posted the tweet for which he was arrested out of frustration about the circumstances of his mother’s death in 2017.

He said, “I would say that it was his annoyance against the Federal Governments that made him write what he wrote, because the government had been owing the mother since her retrenchment from the federal service.

“She worked at the Nigeria Airways and the workers had been retired since 2002, and they didn’t pay them until my wife fell sick for four years.

“We spent everything in our hands until she died in 2017. So, it pained my son so much.”

PREMIUM TIMES’ efforts to contact the Force Public Relation Officer, Frank Mba, on Tuesday were unsuccessful as repeated calls to his telephone line failed to connect and a message sent to him was not replied.

Billionaire Dr. Bolu Akin-Olugbade the Aree Ona Kakanfo of Owu Kingdom is dead.
Information reaching Society Reporters revealed that he died of Covid-19 at the Paelon Covid Center, Ikeja Lagos.

Dr. Akin-Olugbade, Until his death, he was the chairman of Bolu Akin-Olugbade Limited, and GMT Limited, a successful lawyer with a doctorate in Company Law from Cambridge University, and an unabashed lover of high-end Rolls Royce cars are globally reputed as one of the largest collectors of Rolls Royce.

More details about his death would be revealed as soon as we get more information.

May His Soul Rest In Peace.

Societyreporters

A tweet by civil rights activist, Aisha Yesufu, has managed to offend two opposite social groups – the LGBTQ community who wants her removed from Twitter for undermining them, and pro-north tweeter users, Arewa Twitter, who thinks her tweet promotes homosexuality.

LGBTQ is the acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender and Queer people, while Arewa Twitter is Nigerians who are pro-north on the micro-blogging app.

On January 11, Aisha Yesufu provoked the two sides into a rage with the tweet: “You do not need anyone liking your choice of sexuality. All you need is being given the right to practise your sexuality. Homosexuality was freely practised in Nigeria for hundreds of years and I witnessed same-sex marriages in the 80s. So calm down, it is not a new discovery.”

The background to the tweet was a discussion on the historicity of homosexuality in Nigeria. Aisha Yesufu had earlier argued that homosexuality predates western legalization of the act, citing sodomizing of children in boarding schools and practice in the north called “Dan Daudu.”

Dan Daudu, before the introduction of Sharia legal code in the northern part of Nigeria, was openly practised. Men openly dress like women, talk like women and behave like women.

“This passionate ignorance is the problem we have. The hypocrisy of thinking homosexuality is a new trend when it has been practised openly for hundreds of years and same-sex marriage happened here even before it was legalised in the western countries,” she had said.

After Aisha Yesufu’s comment, a front-liner of the Arewa Twitter, @Waspapping_ asked her: “Was that the reason you guys hide behind #ArewaMetoo so you could fight for homosexuals right in the north?”

He added: “Aisha Yesufu is proof that President Buhari was right when he said his wife belongs to his kitchen and the other room.”

Another Arewa Twitter member @_yellows said: “You look at Aisha Yesufu and the nonsense she tweets and you’ll understand why it’s always better when ladies stay in the kitchen.”

Aisha Yesufu responded to Arewa Twitter saying: “Buhari looked at Arewa twitter youth and their #BambiAlaMentality and decided to use the brush on them to brush every other youth across the country and call them lazy youth. Naaah it is the ones on Arewa twitter that are beyond lazy.”

But while the Arewa Twitter members are taking on Aisha Yesufu for not condemning homosexuality, an online community of homosexuals which call itself The Cool House, were at the same time offended by the tweet because it stated that they needed permission to practice their act.  The members later held a virtual meeting to debate how to get Aisha Yesufu suspended from Twitter.

But Aisha Yesufu responded to them: “I am not one of those on this platform desperate to be liked. I have enough love for myself biko. I don’t use social media to pay my bills neither do I collect funding from anyone for my advocacy. I am also not a brand promoter that you will report me and ask them to drop me.” (theexpressng)

The Federal Government of Nigeria reported a revenue shortfall of 27% in 2020, increasing the amount of money borrowed by the government to finance its budget.

The information was made available by the Minister for Finance, Zainab Ahmed, during a public presentation of the 2021 FGN Approved Budget – Breakdown & Highlights which was done via Zoom, an online platform for virtual meetings.

According to the data seen by Nairametrics Research, the FG generated an actual revenue of N3.9 trillion during the year, compared to its targeted revenues of N5.36 trillion. The presentation also indicated that the numbers were preliminary and would be updated once the reconciliation process was concluded.

Oil Revenue Performance

In the report, total oil revenue was N1.5 trillion, about 50% higher than its budget of N1 trillion.

• The government also reported that it received a dividend of N144 billion from its shareholdings in NLNG, up from N80.3 billion a year earlier.
• The fall in oil prices in 2020 forced the government to revise its benchmark crude oil target price to $28 per barrel from the $57 per barrel originally set in the 2020 budget.
• However, average oil prices sold during the year by the government was $43 per barrel as oil prices recovered in the second half of the year as the lockdown eased globally.
• In terms of crude oil production output, the FG reported a total of 1.79 million barrels per day as against the revised 1.8 million barrels per day projected.
• It is important to add that the increased oil revenue was also because of the devaluation of the exchange rate, which rose from a budget of N360/$1 to N379/$1 in the third quarter of the year.

Non-Oil Revenue Performance

Non-Oil revenue performance did worse with revenues falling 21% to N1.2 trillion. Non-oil revenues are mostly taxes, levies, and customs revenues.

• Company Income Tax fell 18% to N673 billion while VAT revenue suffered a 32% drop to generate a N196 billion in revenue.
• Customer revenue also fell 12% to N396 billion despite the effect of the border closure.
• The Nigerian economy was shut down in April 2020 and operated with several limitations amidst government requirements for Nigerians to maintain social distancing and avoid crowded areas.
• This impacted business operations across the country, indirectly affecting their ability to generate revenues that would have been taxed.
• Perhaps the biggest setback in revenues was its earnings in signature bonuses, falling to N78 billion from N350 billion.

Despite the revenue shortfalls, the government still managed to outspend its expenditure targets, reporting a total of N10 trillion compared to a target of N9.9 trillion which was appropriated.

• The report also reveals that of the expenditure, N3.27 trillion was for debt service, and N3.19 trillion for Personnel cost, including Pensions.
• It also revealed that 1.80 trillion had been released for capital expenditure, which is about 89% of the provision for capital.
• Out of this, up to N118.37 billion was released for COVID-19 capital expenditure.

Fiscal Deficit

The result of the revenue shortfall and increased expenditure is a fiscal deficit of about N6.1 trillion as against the N4.6 trillion budgeted by the government.

• To fund this, they borrowed N2 trillion from the domestic market and another N12 trillion from foreign markets.
• The balance N2.8 trillion was obtained from the CBN.
• The government plans to incur a budget deficit of N5.60trillion for 2021, representing 3.93% of GDP.
• It will fund this via N2.34 trillion each in domestic and foreign borrowing and another N709 billion from multilateral sources.
• It hopes that about N205 billion from privatisation proceeds will support its efforts to close the deficit. The government did not report any income from privatisation proceeds in 2020 even though it budgeted N126 billion. Thepodium

By Chibuike Nwabuko
Presidentt of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, has said that there are forces within and outside the country working desperately to frustrate the consideration and passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill presently before the National Assembly. 

Lawan made this known in a speech delivered when members of the Senate Press Corps paid him a visit to mark the occasion of his 62nd birthday celebration in Abuja. 
“The PIB is like a demon. That PIB thing, there are people both inside and outside the country, who would work against it, but it is going to take the strength of our patriotism to pass it,” he said. 

The Special Assistant (Press)to President of the Senate, Ezrel Tabiowo disclosed this in a statement made available to Sundiata Post.According to the Senate President, it took the firm resolve of the National Assembly todisclosed pass the Deep Offshore and Inland Basin Production Sharing Contract Bill in 2019. 
He said that the passage of the Bill by the Legislature caused an increment to the country’s revenue profile from Deep Offshore activities from $216 million annually to $2 billion dollars.   
Lawan, however, assured Nigerians that the same approach adopted by the National Assembly in ensuring the passage of the Deep Offshore and Inland Basin Production Sharing Contract Bill would be deployed for the consideration and eventual passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB). 
“In 2019, when we said we would pass the amendment to the Deep Offshore – Production Sharing Contract – people didn’t want it to happen because they stopped it from happening for twenty years. 
“When it is brought, they’ll come and do something and it will disappear. So, when we said we would do it, some of them came to me and said, you don’t have to do this thing now. It’s not going to work. 
“We said, we will try. The second day they came and said, if we do this (pass the PSC amendment bill), they would leave this country, because that will be against some interests.
“I replied: for once, allow us do something for our country. And I laughed, you are not going anywhere. The kind of things you do in this country, where else in the world would you be allowed to do it? So, we are going to do this amendment. 
“They thought it was a joke. In a week, we finished the amendment. The House was on recess, the day they returned, they concurred. 
“Mr. President knew how important that amendment was. He was in London, and that bill was flown to him. He signed it on a Sunday, just to give that amendment the validity that was needed. 
“For that singular act that we lost billions of dollars, where we were supposed to be given $2 billion dollars, they were giving us $216 million. But from last year after the amendment, it is now $2 billion dollars.
“People didn’t celebrate us, even though they knew what happened. That was what we did for our country, we are proud of ourselves as members of the National Assembly that we have done something worthwhile for our country. That is what we intend to do with the PIB by the grace of God,” the Senate President said. (Sundiatapost)