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Tag: Ajuri Ngelale

  • For Ajuri, like Betta, Greed goes before fall

    For Ajuri, like Betta, Greed goes before fall

    The real reason Ajuri Ngelale resigned from his plum job as President Tinubu’s spokesperson yesterday is that he was about to be sacked.

     

    Ajuri, the 37 year old newsman, like Betta Edu, the former minister of Humanitarian Affairs, simply ate more than he could chew. But unlike his other youngster peer, Ajuri realised he had fallen out of favour of friends and foe alike and he took his own poison.

    Betta Edu, former Humanitarian Affairs Minister: Suspended for stealing allegations

    Facts emerging from the Villa indicate that it was the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr. George Akume that pressed the button that ignited the storm against Mr. Ngelale.

    It all started when Ajuri began to create offices and making himself the head like: Special Presidential Envoy on Climate Action, Chairman of the Presidential Steering Committee on Project Evergreen, Nigeria’s first green industrial zone, as well as  Secretary of the Presidential Committee on Climate Action and Green Economic solutions, which is chaired by President Tinubu.

    George Akume, Secretary to Government of the Federation (SGF) Complained about Mr. Ngelale’s power grabbing tendencies

    This move, apart from the SGF, angered many others, especially technocrats in the climate change movement who felt that Ajuri did not have what it takes to productively steer these engagements.

     

    This turned out to be Mr. Ngelale’s second major and last battle after the first, when he leveraged on his chubby relations with Deji Tinubu, the son of the president and Femi Gbajabiamila, the Chief of Staff to President Tinubu to clinch the job of Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, initially penciled down for Mr. Dele Alake.

     

     

     

     

     

     

    From the above incidents it can be said that, amongst other factors, two elements that hastened Mr. Ngelale’s fall from power were inexperience and greed. Upon ascendancy, Ngelale was found not to be a whiz kid in information management after all.

     

    Some examples include when, in September 2023, he made an incorrect announcement, claiming that Tinubu was the first African president to ring the Nasdaq closing bell.

     

    Another instance was when he declared, rather prematurely that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government had decided to remove Nigeria’s prohibition on visas. The outcry from the media each time was especially embarrassing for the government.

     

    Ajuri simply didn’t fit the part as a topnotch professional to occupy the coveted office. As someone remarked, “Some of his press statements were simply childish,” referring to Ngelale’s social media post in which he claimed to have shattered the State House record for the most statements made in a single day. This happened on July 13, 2024.

     

    The end for Mr.Ajuri Ngelale, presidency revealed, came recently when he was asked to chose between special adviser to the president on media and publicity and special presidential envoy on climate action/ chairman, Presidential Steering Committee on Project Evergreen.

     

    Expectedly, he chose the former. This was however, declined as he was told that if he must continue function in that role then he must work under guidance of an experienced media master.

     

    From thence, Mr. Ngelale knew that the die had been caste and his job had gone. He had to resign.

    The lesson for Mr. Ngelale and others in powerful positions is to be mindful of the toes they step on. When you step on too many toes or ‘certain’ toes, you may loose your balance and fall.

  • Presidential spokesman, Ajuri Ngelale steps down

    Presidential spokesman, Ajuri Ngelale steps down

    Like a flash, the tour of duty of mediaman, Ajuri Ngelale, President Tinubu’s spokesperson has come to an abrupt end as the Bayelsa born journalsit stepped down from his role with immediate effect this saturday..
    In a statement issued by the Presidency on Saturday, Ngelale said he had submitted a memo to the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, informing him of his plan to proceed on indefinite leave.
    Ngelale added that he has stepped down as the Special Presidential Envoy on Climate Action and Chairman of the Presidential Steering Committee on Project Evergreen.
    According to Ngelale, he stepped down from his role to deal with medical matters presently affecting his nuclear family.
    • The statement read, “On Friday, I submitted a memo to the Chief of Staff to the President informing my office that I am proceeding on an indefinite leave of absence to frontally deal with medical matters presently affecting my immediate nuclear family.
    “While I fully appreciate that the ship of state waits for no man, this agonizing decision — entailing a pause of my functions as the Special Adviser to the President on Media & Publicity and Official Spokesperson of the President, Special Presidential Envoy on Climate Action, and Chairman, Presidential Steering Committee on Project Evergreen — was taken after significant consultations with my family over the past several days as a vexatious medical situation has worsened at home.
    “I look forward to returning to full-time national service when time, healing, and fate permit. I respectfully ask for some privacy for my family and me during this time.”

  • Political malpractices and governance malfeasance

    By
    UGO ONUOHA
    “But Nigeria’s president moves around as an Emperor of a rich Gulf state with a N5 billion yacht, a N2 billion custom-made, armour-plated and bomb-resistant American Escalade Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV)- fit only for a monarch or for the leaders of the first world superpower countries such as the United States, Russia and China.”
    LAST week the presidency said in a statement that Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, would be travelling to the People’s Republic of China in the first week of September. Unless something has changed in our comprehension of the English language, the first week of September will ordinarily mean between Sunday, September 1 to Saturday, September 7.
    For a fractured presidency this understanding does not apply. Now let’s quote aspects of that statement issued by his media adviser, Chief Ajuri Ngalela.
    “His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, will depart for the People’s Republic of China, most specifically, Beijing, from nation’s capital (Abuja) within the first week of September, to engage in a series of meetings and activities with immediate and future benefit to the Nigerian economy and the Nigerian people”. However, 48 hours before the start of the first week of September, the president hopped into his jet, in the ‘nation’s capital’, and left the country.
    So, as you read this, Tinubu is reportedly already in China meeting with his counterpart, President Xi Jinping, or visiting big corporations in that Asian country, or interacting with the chief executive officers of companies that boast trillions of dollars in assets. Unlike my wife, I have not been to China, but stories abound that China is, in some respects like New Zealand – a world away. But the import in the conflict in the presidency’s statement and the early departure without further clarification is that the disdain of Tinubu for Nigerians extends to those who directly work for him. It could also be that he chose to leave early so as to savour his new but old (pre-used) super luxurious N250 billion widebody A330 Airbus presidential jet.
    READ ALSO: https://www.mondopoli.it/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Misery-                          Index-Worsens-Poverty-in-Nigeria-final.pdf
    I concede that it will not be uncharitable for any reader to read mischief into the monetary value I have, on my own, assigned to the ‘new’ presidential bird. For a start there was no proper and conventional appropriation and provisioning for the Airbus jet acquisition in the 2024 national budget. It was just bought so that our president will not die in an aircraft crash given that the Boeing Business Jet (BBJ) in the presidential fleet, 19 years old, had become unserviceable and prone to annoying downtimes which embarrass the president and the country in foreign lands. The $150 million USD purchase price for the Airbus was a product of conjecture by the media. It is the same for the $50 million allocated to retrofit and upscale the jet to fit the status of a feudal president. Depending on who you ask, we have between eight to 10 aircraft and choppers in the presidential fleet of a poor country led by a poor president who soaks garri and eats groundnuts for lunch according to Vice President Kashim Shettima. This diet inside a presidential jet will be a spectacle worth beholding.
    As usual the president and the regime he heads do not deem it fit and proper to account to Nigerians on how they came about the aircraft; where it was sourced from; when; and, for how much? All Nigerians were told, and grudgingly so, by a low-level presidential staff on the social media, was that the aircraft was snapped up during an auction, and paid for through a now veritable slush fund called service wide vote. The service wide vote can be likened to the notorious security vote, a channel through which heads in the executive arms of government use to steal money from the public till. The notoriety of the abuse of this budgetary provision was unearthed in a research paper published in 2019.
    The research work conducted by Messrs William Smart Ekong, Sunday Effiong, Charles Effiong, and, John Ogenyi Oboh under the title ‘Use of Service -Wide Vote (Contingency Budget) for National Development: Evidence from Federal Ministries, Departments And Agencies in Nigeria’ revealed that government ministries and agencies, and even the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) abused the service wide vote “to the tune of over N4.17 trillion between 2004 and 2018 due to non-compliance with rules governing the use of the vote”. The researchers, after observing that the abuse had stunted and blunted national developmental objectives of the vote, proceeded to make recommendations to help police the vote including allocation of 5% of the annual budget to service -wide-vote, regular replenishment of releases from the vote, obtaining approval from the National Assembly before releasing funds from the vote, roll over of unspent funds, prosecution of corrupt MDA officials, and avoiding those sharp practices that “will make the use of the service-wide-vote ineffective in achieving national developmental objectives”.
    “But Nigeria’s president moves around as an Emperor of a rich Gulf state with a N5 billion yacht, a N2 billion custom-made, armour-plated and bomb-resistant American Escalade Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV)- fit only for a monarch or for the leaders of the first world superpower countries such as the United States, Russia and China.”
    Two things confront us in the findings and recommendations of these researchers, two of whom were said to be of the University of Calabar in Cross River state. First, there’s no evidence yet that the five year – old study which was published in the Research Journal of Finance and Accounting 10(10): 45-62 found favour with Nigeria’s rulers. Secondly, the scholars may not have envisaged that this country will be burdened with a national assembly that is completely beholden to the executive arm of government. But it does not really matter because it is not beyond Tinubu and his cheerleaders to argue that the acquisition of a N250 billion jet in an opaque manner was one of the reasons for the creation of the service-wide-vote. This is what you get when a ruler is brazenly contemptuous of the people.
    Meanwhile, Nigeria’s population is currently put at anywhere between 200-250 million. Since nobody knows the country’s population for sure, we are bound to rely on projections, conjectures and guess-estimates. About two years ago, Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) found that not less than 133 million people were dimensionally poor – food poor, health poor, education poor, housing/shelter poor, potable water poor, sanitation poor, etc. Since May last year, many more Nigerians have dropped into the category of the dimensionally poor in the wake of the no brainer economic policy options of the extant regime, with the figure unofficially put at over 150 million citizens.
    “He described Tinubu as “arrogant, ignorant, and incompetent” for prioritising flamboyant lifestyle and luxury travel amid ongoing economic struggles in Nigeria, where according to him, inflation rates were reportedly as high as 114%.”
    Nigeria has consecutively remained the global capital of poverty since 2019 when it inherited the dubious tag from India. By the way, India is about six times the population of Nigeria. But Nigeria’s president moves around as an Emperor of a rich Gulf state with a N5 billion yacht, a N2 billion custom-made, armour-plated and bomb-resistant American Escalade Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV)- fit only for a monarch or for the leaders of the first world superpower countries such as the United States, Russia and China. The stark and painful difference is that these other leaders drive vehicles made in their countries. But Tinubu luxuriates in an Escalade made by Cadillac, the luxury division of General Motors, a jet manufactured in France, and a yacht of unknown origin.
    Except for the yacht, none of the luxury acquisitions of the president has the regime found the need to tell Nigerians how much they cost the taxpayer. And this is because Tinubu has an abiding disdain for Nigerians. And other government officials have copied him. Why bother when there are no consequences for being contemptuous of Nigerians. At the weekend, one American economist reportedly said Tinubu was an insufferable and ignorant person. But I wager that Tinubu knows what he is doing. Steve Hanke is a professor at Johns Hopkins University. He described Tinubu as “arrogant, ignorant, and incompetent” for prioritising flamboyant lifestyle and luxury travel amid ongoing economic struggles in Nigeria, where according to him, inflation rates were reportedly as high as 114%. This is about three times the figure given by the NBS. He appeared to suggest that the NBS inflation rate was a product of fiction. The message is that the world is taking note of the choices of the ruler of an underdeveloped and debt-ridden third world country.
    Tinubu’s supporters who are to be pitied are wont to point us to other countries where people, according to them, are going through struggles and a cost of living crisis. They also point to some luxuries enjoyed by such leaders. But not once would they acknowledge that no two situations are the same. They won’t tell us that global poverty has since taken permanent residency in our country. Let’s illustrate with one example what a sensitive leader who finds himself leading an economically challenged country will do.
    Keir Starmer is the new UK prime minister. Last week he told Britons and others that his first budget due next month “is going to be painful”. He said that he had no other options but assured that only those with the broadest shoulders will “bear the heavier burden. Starmer said his choices were limited because his administration inherited a £22 billion black hole as well as a”societal black hole”. But before Starmer warned about the sacrifices he would call on the people to make, he first started with himself and the privileges of his own office as prime minister. He announced that a £40m VIP helicopter contract used extensively by his predecessor Rishi Sunak for local travels will not be renewed when it expires by the end of this year. He said it will be in keeping with his promise when he sought the vote of the people to undo “14 years of rot” and profligacy under the Conservatives. Starmer is of the Labour Party.
    PLEASE READ: https://nairametrics.com/2024/08/30/tinubus-1-trillion-gdp-                                 target-will-not-be-possible-in-5-years-bismarck-rewane/
    Sunak had used the government – funded helicopters on several occasions while he held sway, even when it was obvious train travel would have been almost as quick and convenient, and certainly cheaper for some of the expensive trips with the chopper. Starmer’s action could be derided as cheap populism but no leader, except in Nigeria, has a right to ask for understanding and sacrifices from the people while he immersed himself in sickening luxury. Signaling, that’s what Starmer has demonstrated. And to think that the UK belongs to the first world. But here, Tinubu whose country may not even qualify to be designated as a third world country lives in a fortress renovated with billions of Naira before he moved in last year, glides in a N5 billion yacht, rides inside billions of Naira worth of a foreign made SUV, and junkets around the world in a foreign manufactured presidential jet on the excuse of wooing foreign investors.
    There’s no doubt that world leaders look at him with scorn, knowing that every of the luxury items he uses were shamelessly acquired with foreign loans. And some of these lending institutions are domiciled in the countries of those leaders where he goes to show off. Tinubu is like that arrogant king in the Igbo nation who struts about in the market square to impress people but did not realise that his royal gown was smeared with feaces. Who will tell Tinubu this truth? But will he listen?
    *Incipient tyranny and unfolding imperial presidency will, other things being equal, form the concluding part of this trilogy next week.

  • President Tinubu appoints new DGs for NIA, DSS

    President Bola Tinubu has approved the appointment of Amb. Mohammed Mohammed as the new Director General for the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and Mr. Adeola  Oluwatosin Ajayi as the new head of the Department of State Services (DSS).
    Both appointments are sequel to the recent resignation of erstwhile chiefs of both agencies.
    Background of the new DGs
    Both Directors-General are round pegs in round holes, having been seasoned security experts who rose through the ranks.
    Ambassador Mohammed, a 1990 graduate of Bayero University, Kano, has had an illustrious career in the foreign service since joining the NIA in 1995. He had served in various roles, culminating in his promotion to the rank of Director and his subsequent appointment as the head of the Nigerian mission to Libya.
    He  had served in North Korea, Pakistan, Sudan, and at the State House, Abuja.
    The new DSS Director-General, Mr. Adeola Ajayi, also rose through the ranks to attain his current post of Assistant Director-General of the Service. He had, at various times, served as State Director in Bauchi, Enugu, Bayelsa, Rivers, and Kogi.
    Presidential Mandate
    While appreciating the outgone DGs for the services to the nation, the President charged the new chiefs of the nation’s apex security institutions to build upon and endeavour to surpass the successes of their predecessors.
    President Tinubu expects that the new security chiefs will work assiduously to reposition the two intelligence agencies for better results and charges them to bring their experience to bear in tackling the security challenges bedeviling the country.
    A statement by the President’s adviser on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale disclosed that President charged them to establish enhanced collaboration with sister agencies and in surgical alignment with the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA).