London summit okays return of looted cash to Nigeria, others …….. NATION

Yesterday’s anti-corruption summit in London agreed to a plan to speed up international efforts on asset recovery.

The Global Forum for Asset Recovery will bring together governments and law enforcement agencies to discuss returning assets to Nigeria, Ukraine, Sri Lanka and Tunisia.

The meeting will be held in the United States (US) next year, co-hosted with the United Kingdom (UK), and supported by the United Nations (UN) and the World Bank, the BBC reported.

Senate to debate price …… NATION

The Senate is to debate fuel price increase next week.

A source close to the leadership of the Senate said the debate “will afford senators to tell their constituents where they stand on the burning issue”.

He said: “Surely, we are going to discuss it when we reconvene next week. Some Senators are, no doubt, agitated about the way and manner the increase was announced while some others are bound to support the new policy.

“But it is necessary that we discuss the issue so as to let our constituents know where we stand. I can tell you, as explosive as the debate might be, the leadership of the Senate will not be opposed to the idea of debating the matter.”

New email release shows Clinton chose not to use secure phone line, acknowledged Blackberry risk …… C

A new set of State Department documents released Thursday by the watchdog group Judicial Watch reveal then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the choice not to use a secure phone line amid a technical problem and acknowledged the risk of using a private Blackberry phone.

The documents contain a Feb. 22, 2009, email exchange between Clinton and her then-Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills attempting to communicate over a secure line after Clinton returned from an overseas trip.

When there were issues setting up a secure communication, Clinton wrote to Mills, “I called ops and they gave me your ‘secure’ cells… but only got a high-pitched whining sound.”

EFCC searches Fani-Kayode’s house, arrests domestic worker …….. PUNCH

Operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Thursday stormed the Abuja home of a former Minister of Aviation, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, and arrested a domestic servant, The PUNCH has learnt.
It was learnt that the operatives stormed the house located at 5 Zuma Close, Aso Drive, Abuja in the afternoon and searched the compound.

However, the detectives could not gain access to the main building as it was said to have been locked.

Donald Trump disavows longtime butler after he called for Obama to be killed ……. CNN

Donald Trump’s campaign is disavowing the real estate mogul’s former butler, after he posted to Facebook Thursday that he wants President Barack Obama to be killed.

Anthony Senecal, who served as Trump’s butler for 17 years and now takes groups on tours of the presumptive Republican nominee’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, wrote in a Facebook post Wednesday that Obama “should have been taken out by our military and shot as an enemy agent in his first term,” according to Mother Jones, which first reported on Senecal’s post.

Reached for comment by CNN on Thursday, Senecal, 84, confirmed he wrote the post, but disputed one point, “I think I said hung.”

“Either way, I don’t care. Hanging, shooting — I’d prefer he’d be hung from the portico of the White House, or as I call it, the white mosque,” Senecal said in a phone interview Thursday.

Davido: Singer set for live stage performance in the Netherlands

Davido is set to perform live on stage in Holland at Clubblunl Rotterdam.

“Finally I’ll be live in Rotterdam Holland!! Saturday 4th June clubblunl rotterdam! tickets at www.clubblu.nl big up to Djhenryx_ !!!

France Pogba leads squad for Euro 2016

Paul Pogba heads up France's 23-man squad for Euro 2016, with Nice star Hatem Ben Arfa and Manchester United midfielder Morgan Schneiderlin the most notable absentees inDidier Deschamps' selection.

Meet Donald Trump’s Chinese fans …… REUTERS

China is quite possibly Donald Trump’s favorite campaign-trail target.

Earlier this month, the presumptive Republican nominee went as far as describing China’s trade relationship with the U.S. as “rape” and has repeatedly said China is stealing U.S. jobs.

Given talk like that, you might be surprised to find fans of Trump in China. But they exist, in small, but growing numbers.

Gu Yu, a young technology entrepreneur, likes his blunt, no-punches-held approach.

“I think Donald Trump has the guts to say things that normal people in the rest of society fear to say,” said Gu.

He says he is 100% supportive of Trump, and even though he can’t cast a ballot, he says the Americans that can should trust Trump.

“I think political correctness covers up problems instead of solving them,” said Gu.

Growing number of fans

Exclusive: Trump surges in support, almost even with Clinton in national U.S. poll …… REUTERS

Donald Trump’s support has surged and he is now running nearly even with Democrat Hillary Clinton among likely U.S. voters, a dramatic turnaround since he became the Republican party’s presumptive presidential nominee, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday.

The results could signal a close fight between the two likely White House rivals as Americans make up their minds ahead of the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama. As recently as last week, Clinton led Trump by around 13 points in the poll.

In the most recent survey, 41 percent of likely voters supported Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, and 40 percent backed Trump, with 19 percent not decided on either yet, according to the online poll of 1,289 people conducted from Friday to Tuesday. The poll had a credibility interval of about 3 percentage points.

Atletico Madrid: Simeone targets final flourish

Atletico Madrid boss Diego Simeone is targeting a strong performance against Celta Vigo on Sunday as a key part of his side's preparations for their Champions League final clash with Real Madrid in Milan on May 28th.

U.S. foreign policy veteran warns Trump would make world less stable ……. REUTERS

Donald Trump’s foreign policy proposals would make the world a less stable place, former Secretary of State James Baker told a U.S. Senate hearing on Thursday as the Republican presidential candidate met elsewhere with party congressional leaders.

Under questioning from Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a former Trump rival in the presidential race, Baker said the world “would be far less stable” with a weaker NATO or if more countries had nuclear weapons as Trump has proposed.

“We’ve a got a lot of problems today, but we’d have a hell of a lot more if that were the case,” Baker told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, adding that U.S. commitments around the world “promote U.S. security.”

Trump met with Baker on Thursday at Trump’s request, said a Baker spokesman, who declined further comment.

Liverpool are "100 percent" ready for the Europa League final against defending championsSevilla on May 18, manager Juergen Klopp said on Friday.

Exclusive: U.S. plans new wave of immigrant deportation raids …….. REUTERS

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has now told field offices nationwide to launch a 30-day “surge” of arrests focused on mothers and children who have already been told to leave the United States, the document seen by Reuters said. The operation would also cover minors who have entered the country without a guardian and since turned 18 years of age, the document said. Two sources confirmed the details of the plan.

N109m Pension Scam: Ex-Pension Accountant, Abisuga Bags 24months Jail Term

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The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on Thursday, May 12, 2016 secured the conviction of Babatunde Abisuga, a former accountant of the Federal Civil Service Commission, who is being prosecuted on a 5-count charge bordering on conspiracy, stealing, abuse of office and forgery before Justice Maryann Anennih of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory sitting in Maitama, Abuja.

He was arraigned alongside Mohammed Ndakupe and Hassan Mohammed Tukur (now late) on April 3, 2012 on a 12-count charge which they pleaded not guilty to.

Abisuga, through his counsel, M. A. Ebute later prayed the court to allow him explore the option of plea bargain since the money had been recovered in full and handed over to the Federal Civil Service Commission.

DisCos of darkness By Lawal Ogienagbon

POWER outage is not strange in this land. It is something we have become used to. We are only surprised when light is stable. We keep on wondering what is happening, expecting the light to go off any time. As long as there is light we feel uncomfortable. It is as if something is wrong somewhere; as if we are being propelled by a force to will the power authority to cut light. Call it the force of darkness, you may not be wrong.

Living in darkness has been our lot since the days of the Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN) – the forerunner of the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA).

With the explosion in our population by the time NEPA came into being in 1972, it was obvious that we may be having an energy crisis if we did not do the right things. We relied solely on hydropower for our supply needs then. It was not the era of gas turbines and power plants.

Nigeria and Britain are ‘fantastically corrupt’ By Chidi Oguamanam

One of the off record welcome hospitality that the Conservative Prime Minister of Britain, Mr. David Cameron, extended to President Muhammadu Buhari who attended the May 10 Anti-Corruption Summit in London is his sneaky remark to the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, ahead of that summit that Nigeria (alongside Afghanistan) is a “fantastically corrupt” country.

My impression is that Her Majesty may have a better sense of history than Cameron regarding the British ingenuity and bad faith in its relationship with its African and other colonies around the world. In the particular case of Nigeria, the British were the architects of corruption through their disruption of ethnic nationalities and the political and cultural cohesion that existed. The British did not think twice to co-opt respected African traditional political structures into its political vision, slave trade and other resource exploitation and mercantile agenda. Since then, things have fallen apart as eminently captured by Chinua Achebe and many others.

Bloody love in hard times By Gbenga Omotosho

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Does anybody care about this terrible trend?

People committing murder with ease. Many threatening to commit suicide and some actually committing suicide or attempting to end it all when they can no longer bend it.

There are also many cases of husbands killing their wives and wives killing their husbands in a macabre reversal of deep and psychic spousal affection. The Sophocles era all over again?

Nigeria is ‘fantastically corrupt’, what’s new? By Abimbola Adelakun

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What point was the President’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, trying to make when he responded to the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, who had described Nigeria as “fantastically corrupt” and as “possibly one of the two most corrupt countries in the world” (along with Afghanistan)? Shehu’s swift comeback to this diplomatic gaffe was to suggest that Cameron was working with an “old snapshot” of Nigeria, that things had changed since the coming of Buhari.

This is a rather disappointing response from Nigeria, one that does not add any sauce to the power dynamics at play here. The suggestion of an “old Nigeria” (decimated by the Peoples Democratic Party) vs. a “new Nigeria” (currently being recreated by President Muhammadu Buhari) is a rather tepid argument and smacks of an over-eagerness to please.

PMB: Return to the drawing table By Gbogun Gboro

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Today, most of us Nigerians live in poverty. About 70% of us are estimated to be living in “absolute poverty” – meaning that we are barely keeping alive with just about one U.S. dollar a day. The days are gone when parents who sacrifice to give their children education can hopefully wait for those children to graduate and come back to help. It is sad to watch bright young graduates roam the streets jobless endlessly and, in desperation, turn to crime or terrorism.

Developing minds, developing nations – Part 2 By Leonard Shilgba

The reason is obvious – arbitrary billing fills their purse with ill-gotten wealth. While in other towns and villages where analogue or post-payment meters are still being used in Nigeria, DISCOS would bring in outrageous bills without considering the supply and consumption sides of the billing equation. In an economy such as ours, and in agreement with our culture of pre-payment economy, why does government allow those DISCOS to continue with this robbery?

Unless President Buhari has come to accept this enslaving treatment of Nigerians by the GENCOS and DISCOS, who have lately treated us to a comedy of trading blames as just, it is time to reverse this “privatisation.” The cost of reversal cannot outweigh this oppression and the cost of failure. I wish to alert the president that public unrest or violence will be provoked if the Federal Government did not rein in those taunting wolves. Nigerians will have every right to resist this exploitation. We are fed up with this nonsense!

When lawmakers become lawbreakers By Fred Nwaozor

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SEVERAL legislative councils at various quarters across the country have violated or broken the law which they are bound to safeguard. The most popular phenomenon in this regard is impeachment process, which has become the order of the day in recent times.

Similarly, sometimes you would hear that a particular deputy governor or even a governor is passing through such ordeal in the hands of the lawmakers. This prac­tice has continued unabated that most con­cerned Nigerians have wondered if the im­peachment took place during the midnight.

Power of the National Assembly to scrap a State By Chris Akiri

IN its Tuesday, May 3, 2016 edition, on pages 43 and 48, The Guardiancarried the contents of an interview it granted to Mr. Kemi Balogun, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), in which interview Mr. Balogun wrongly asseverated that the National Assembly could easily set at naught, to use his lan­guage, scrap, any of the federating units (States, like Ekiti, for instance) as currently constituted if it is able to mobilize two-thirds of its members to do so. According to him, “they (the States) have no option because they are the creation of the centre….” Con­tinuing, he said, “The centre that created them can swallow up the states here. An Act of the national assembly can scrap them…If 2/3 of National As­sembly elects to scrap a state, it is scrapped.” Two-thirds of the National Assembly? That is, about 312 national parliamentarians can scrap a State, a feder­ating unit? I beg to disagree, with respect.

Right Step: Guided Deregulation By Francis Jeremiah Ajakpo

Yesterday, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, on behalf of the Federal Government, made an announcement that is of great national import. It was equal in rank to a national presidential broadcast because it touched on an issue that represents a tectonic shift in the national policy regulating the provision of petrol to service the national economy. He informed the country of the Government’s decision to deregulate the price of petrol to ensure that the private sector can participate in the importation of that vital product.

The NNPC, constrained by foreign exchange unavailability, does not have the financial muscle to import the volume of petrol that can satisfy domestic demand. The wisdom of the new policy is that it will act as an incentive for the private sector to source, from any legitimate place, the foreign exchange with which to import a product that has a very ready market in the country. The nation consumes about 40 million litres of petrol daily. Any businessman or organisation who/which has the money to import such a commodity is not likely to suffer a loss. It is therefore hoped that this new policy will ensure the ready availability of petrol and spare motorists, commuters, industrialists and just about all Nigerians the pains and agonies we have been going through for the past 30 or more years and especially in recent times when we suffered prolonged fuel scarcity.

Economic crisis: Saudi Arabia Fires Oil Minister | TheCable

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Saudi Arabia has sacked Ali al-Naimi, its oil minister as part of a major cabinet reshuffle announced in a series of royal decrees issued by King Salman on Saturday.

Naimi, who started his career in oil at the age of 12, has been in charge of the ministry since 1995 when he was appointed by King Fahd.

PDP leaders threaten parallel convention …… NATION

SOME Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftains will in Abuja today, protest Senator Ali Modu Sheriff’s chairmanship bid.

The chieftains, who are from the Northcentral, Notheast, Southwest and Southeast, are expected to take a position on the zoning crisis that has polarised the party in the last one month

Sources said the meeting will be attended by former Niger State Governor Babangida Aliyu, former Information Minister Prof. Jerry Gana, former National Secretary and Transport Minister, Chief Ojo Maduekwe, and former National Deputy Chairman, Chief Olabode George.