The chief executive of the Africa Investment and Trade Summit and Exhibition (AITE), Tunde MacAlabi, has lauded the Air Peace chairman, Allen Onyema, for his unwavering patriotism, noting that the resumption of the Lagos-London flights by his airline on March 30 has crashed fares on the lucrative route by about 50% for the benefit of the Nigerian people. In a statement in Lagos this morning signed by himself, the AITE chairman said that the significant reduction in fares “owes to Onyema’s love of Nigeria. “He could have gone into a furtive deal with the only two foreign air carriers operating…
Author: C Don Adinuba
Chukwuemeka Pius Ezeife, Anambra State governor from January 1992 to November 1993 who died last month at 86, hauled himself up by the bootstraps and became an embodiment of progress. He took to apprentice trading on leaving primary school owing to a paucity of funds. Yet, before anyone knew it, he had obtained a doctorate in economics from Harvard, becoming a lecturer at Makerere University in Uganda. At the end of the Nigerian Civil War in 1970, he rejoined the federal civil service, retiring as a permanent secretary. He then dived straight into business and left a footprint in no…
In his famous study of leadership, Jim Collins, regarded as one of the most engaging leadership scholars across the globe, states in his book entitled Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t, that there are otherwise excellent leaders who have the weakness of not wanting their successors to do very well. They relish being described as indispensable, even after they have left office. You can never hear them say anything positive about their predecessors or successors. But the best and most effective leaders, according to Collins, are those who acknowledge the contributions of others and…
There is so much the Igbo can celebrate about themselves. Take their brilliant performance in education which is phenomenal. Whether in the West African School Certificate examination or the Joint Admissions Matriculation examination or the entrance examination into Federal Government Colleges or into the Federal Government-owned School for the Gifted and Talented in Abuja, the story is the same. Even in global educational competitions, the Igbos are outstanding. This is by no means fortuitous. By 1945 when the Second World War ended, there were a handful of Igbo graduates because the Igbos live in the interior; the Europeans who brought…
If you ask Nigerians to name past power ministers randomly, it is most likely that they will start with Bart Nnaji, the preeminent engineering professor in the United States who has for almost two decades been almost synonymous with history-changing initiatives in the Nigerian electric power sector. Nnaji left office over a decade ago. He served for only one year, from July 2011 to August 2012. Even when he was the Presidential Adviser on Power and Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Power (PTFP), Nnaji was the face of the country’s power sector. Not just as regards the reforms…
As Bart Nnaji, globally acknowledged engineering professor and Minister of Science and Technology from August, 1993, to November, 1993, who was to become the Minister of Power from July, 2011, to August, 2012, marks 66 years on Wednesday, July 13, 2022, many Nigerians, on taking a critical look at the electric sector today, are likely to borrow an expression popularized by Nigeria’s founding president, Nnamdi Azikiwe, to pay homage to him: History vindicates the just. Much as Nnaji cannot be happy that the power sector has nosedived since 2012, the truth remains eternal that history has vindicated his strong opposition…
Security agents in Aba, the industrial city of Abia State, have arrested three youths in the state for vandalizing public electric supply equipment which recently plunged parts of the state into darkness for days. Air Commodore Nicholas Orjiude (retired), the chief security officer of Geometric Power Ltd, the owner of Aba Power Ltd which provides electricity to nine out of the 17 local government areas in Abia State, gave the names of the apprehended youths as Nnamdi Nwobilor and Desmond Nkangnobi as well as Chinemerem Okechi. Nwobilor and Okechi are from Osisioma on the outskirts of Aba where both the…
The Aba Power Project, a member of Geometric Power group, has launched a campaign against those vandals of its assets in nine of the 17 Local Government Areas it is serving in Abia State, according to its managing director, Patrick Umeh, a former commissioner with the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC). The campaign is also being mounted against those who steal critical components in distribution transformers, distribution infrastructure and illegal connections as well as those who engage in meter bypassing. “It is extremely difficult to understand how some individuals are so unconscionable as to put industries, whole estates, villages and…
The third of the three Geometric Power Company’s thermal turbines sent to Houston, Texas, in the United States for periodic retrofitting is back in the country, preparatory to the commissioning of the 141 megawatt Aba Power Project later in the year. Two of the three turbines sent out in December, 2019, to Houston, Texas in the United States for a comprehensive check at the plant of General Electric (GE), the world’s biggest electricity equipment manufacturing group in the world, have already been reinstalled at the Geometric Power Plant at Osisioma Industrial Layout in Aba, Abia State, while the third is…
Nigeria’s search for increased electric power supply has received a major boost with the emergence of a new electric distribution company in Aba, Abia State, bringing the number of electricity distribution firms in the country to 12. The previous ones are located in Abuja, Jos, Kano, Ibadan, Kaduna, Port Harcourt, Benin, Yola, Enugu, Ikeja and Eko, with the last two covering Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital. They were all built by the government, but privatized on November 1, 2013. The new electricity distribution company (DisCo) is known as the APL Electric Company Ltd. It is understood that APL Electric Company is…
As Chief Emeka Anyaoku, the first African to serve as Secretary General of the Commonwealth of Nations, turns 89 today, the government and people of Anambra State celebrate this global citizen who thinks home. He is in every sense exemplary. Anyaoku at 89 One of the most decorated Africans in modern history, as exemplified by 34 honorary doctoral degrees he has received from various local and foreign universities, Chief Anyaoku’s tenure as the Commonwealth chief executive from 1990 to 2000 is spoken about throughout the world in nostalgic terms. The organization, for example, became a global vehicle for the mobilization…
When he received on Tuesday, August 31, a letter from the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission pronouncing Anambra a petroleum-bearing state with all the benefits like entitlement to the 13% derivation principle in the sharing of national revenue, Governor Willie Obiano read the letter twice. Convinced it is real, he passed it to three aides around him and recited a scriptural passage which reads: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge,…
The people and Government of Anambra State have received with sadness the departure of two former First Ladies, Mrs Victoria Aguiyi-Ironsi, and Mrs Adanma Okpara, who died a day apart last weekend. Mrs Aguiyi-Ironsi was the widow of Nigeria’s first military Head of State, Major General Johnson Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, who also the first indigenous General Officer Commanding (GOC), Nigerian Army. Mrs Okpara, on the other hand, was the widow of Dr Michael I. Okpara, the Premier of the Eastern Nigerian Region from 1960 to 1966 when Nigeria experienced its first military coup d’etat. While Mrs Aguiyi-Ironsi died at almost 98…
The Anambra State Government has commended the Court of Appeal sitting in Kano for setting aside the controversial judgment of the Jigawa State High Court at Birnin Kudu of June 30 recognizing Jude Okeke as the National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA). In a judgment delivered today, the Court of Appeal unanimously recognized Chief Victor Oye as the party’s national chairman and consequently affirmed the former Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Professor Chukwuma Charles Soludo, as the APGA candidate in the November 6 gubernatorial election in the state. “Hope in the Nigerian judiciary as the temple of…
1. Following the clash in the early morning of Monday, April 26, between some people in Uzo Nkwo, Awkuzu, in Oyi Local Government Area, and some non-indigenes, some people were killed and some others maimed. Both sides recorded casualties. Security agents quickly moved to the scene and took control of the situation. 2. However, rather than give a reliable picture of what transpired, some external forces have been posting on social media lurid pictures of what took place outside Anambra State long ago and claim that they are pictures of the incident at Awkuzu. The misleading pictures and accounts are…
People living in Anambra State may not always appreciate the uniqueness of the state since the last few years until they hear stories of what happens elsewhere or, better, travel out of the state. As you arrive in the state from a travel which made you traverse, say, five states, you would think you are in another country, in the words of Okey Ndibe, the famous novelist, journalist, columnist, social critic, professor of literature and African studies in the United States. On Sunday, December 20, Okey, my closest childhood friend, and I set out from Lagos by road at 8.15am…
1. The Anambra State Government has noted with dismay the sudden appearance of propaganda materials against the person purported to be the state’s coronavirus index case. The materials, including social media broadcasts, began to emerge within 24 hours after the state recorded its index case on Friday, April 10. 2. he materials are slanderous and violate all known medical ethics. They were obviously made by persons who want to raise a false alarm and create panic everywhere. The state government has not revealed the name of the index case, nor have the hospital authorities where he is receiving treatment now…
The Anambra State government has condoled with the family of Dr. Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo over the death of their patriarch. Dr. Nwankwo, 77, died yesterday at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Ituku Ozala, Enugu State, after a brief illness. In a statement in Awka today, the Anambra State Commissioner for Information, Mr. C. Don Adinuba, described Dr. Nwankwo’s passage as at once painful and glorious. “Painful because Nwankwo was one of the few people in the world who should never die”, Commissioner Adinuba stated. “Glorious because he was able to achieve so much for not just his country but…
The Government of Anambra State has declared Monday, November 18, 2019 a Public Holiday in honour of the great Owelle of Onitsha, Right Honourable Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe. Following this declaration, Monday, November 18, 2019 shall be observed as a work free day in Anambra State. The Public Holiday which was declared to mark the birthday of Nigeria’s only indigenous Governor General and pioneer President should have held on his actual birthday which is Saturday, November 16, 2019 but has to be observed on Monday November 18 for obvious reasons. A statement from the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor of…
Governor Willie Obiano of Anambra State expresses sympathy to the families of a woman and a child burnt to death this afternoon in a truck accident in Onitsha. The fire also razed structures, including shops, on Upper Iweka Road, Onitsha. The accident occurred when a tanker laden with premium motor spirit, popularly known as petrol, fell into a ditch and began to spill its contents. A ball of fire resulted from this incident and quickly spread. Men of the Anambra State Fire Service arrived on the scene in good time with their new equipment. For some reason, however, they were…
Anambra at the weekend consolidated its position as Nigeria’s foremost state in the promotion of education as it won four of the Federal Government’s 24 awards bestowed on institutions and individuals to mark this year’s Teachers Day in the country. None of the other 35 states plus the Federal Capital Territory received more than one award. At the 2019 President’s Teachers and Schools Awards for Excellence in Education organized by the Federal Government through the Federal Ministry of Education, Anambra State won prizes for producing the best public secondary school in the country, the best secondary school administrator, and for…
With a gross domestic product (GDP) of $13.77 billion out of Nigeria’s $375.8 billion, and with GDP per capita of $2,295 as against Nigeria’s GDP per capita of $1,968; Anambra State has the fourth healthiest economy among the 36 States in Nigeria plus the Federal Capital Territory. If it were a nation, its GDP per capita would be the 17th biggest in Africa, ahead of countries like Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, Senegal and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The recent national recession had a minimum impact on our State because the government introduced a stimulus package which caused the most vulnerable…
