FUEL SCARCITY IS TO BLACKMAIL NIGERIANS

The current artificial fuel scarcity in parts of the country is to blackmail Nigerians into accepting higher fuel prices and pressure the National Assembly (NASS) to discontinue the probe into the wholesale fraud in the oil industry. The contrived scarcity is an unholy alliance between major oil marketers and  various government agencies.

The  claim by the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria and the Independent  Petroleum Marketers of Nigeria that the patriotic probe into the corruption-ridden oil sector  by the NASS  has created "uncertainties" and loss of confidence by the financial institutions which has translated into fuel scarcity, is ridiculous. Banks cannot be scared to work with honest businesses as the marketers are claiming, and the country cannot be blackmailed to allow fraudsters continue to dominate the oil sector.

It is unacceptable to the NLC  that marketers and the Government  will contrive to push the price of a litre  of petrol (PMS) back to N140  under the guise of fuel scarcity. We also assure the National  Assembly that Nigerians are solidly behind its probe into the age long theft of our oil wealth and the fleecing  of the country through the inflation of the subsidy on fuel. The future of our country  lies in our ability, determination and the political will to tackle the endemic corruption that has become cancerous and is threatening our very existence.

It is ironic that the very people  who contributed to the present state of affairs in the oil industry are those claiming to be sanitizing it by setting up a plethora of committees allegedly to cleanse the industry. These committees which are mainly political patronage, are creating a new bureaucracy  in Government and driving up the cost of governance contrary to President Goodluck Jonathan's January 16, 2012  pledge to the country that the cost of governance will be reduced.

The NLC again reiterates that the Jonathan administration has no alternative but to live up to its promise that Nigerians will richly reap the dividends of the fuel price hike. The claims by some government officials that the mass protests organised by Labour and it's allies which led to the reduction of a litre of PMS from N140 to N97 has made the fulfillment of the promise impossible  is childish. it is like a dull, in attentive pupil  blaming the teacher for his failure. Nigerians are not interested in excuses; they demand and deserve good governance and the dividends of democracy.

Owei Lakemfa
NLC Acting General Secretary.
Sunday 26th February, 2012

Whitney Houston, superstar of records, films, dies

FILE - In this Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010 file photo, Whitney Houston accepts an award at the Warner Theatre during the 2010 BET Hip Hop Honors in Washington. Houston died Saturday, Feb. 11, 2012, she was 48. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)

LOS ANGELES — Whitney Houston, who ruled as pop music's queen until her majestic voice was ravaged by drug use and her regal image was ruined by erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, died Saturday. She was 48.

Beverly Hills police Lt. Mark Rosen said Houston was pronounced dead at 3:55 p.m. in her room on the fourth floor of the Beverly Hilton. A Los Angeles County coroner's official said the body remained in the building late Saturday.

"There were no obvious signs of any criminal intent," Rosen said.

Houston's publicist, Kristen Foster, said the cause of death was unknown.

Rosen said police received a 911 call from hotel security about Houston at 3:43 p.m. Saturday. Paramedics who were already at the hotel because of a Grammy party were not able to resuscitate her, he said.

Houston's death came on the eve of music's biggest night — the Grammy Awards. It's a showcase where she once reigned, and where she will be remembered Sunday in a tribute by Jennifer Hudson, organizers said.

Her longtime mentor Clive Davis went ahead with his annual concert at the same hotel where her body was found. He dedicated the evening to her and asked for a moment of silence as a photo of the singer, hands wide open, looking to the sky, appeared on the screen.

Houston was supposed to appear at the gala, and Davis had told The Associated Press that she would perhaps perform: "It's her favorite night of the year ... (so) who knows by the end of the evening," he said.

Houston had been at rehearsals for the show Thursday, coaching singers Brandy and Monica, according to a person who was at the event but was not authorized to speak publicly about it. The person said Houston looked disheveled, was sweating profusely and liquor and cigarettes could be smelled on her breath.

Two days ago, she performed at a pre-Grammy party with singer Kelly Price. Singer Kenny Lattimore hosted the event, and said Houston sang the gospel classic "Jesus Loves Me" with Price, her voice registering softly, not with the same power it had at its height.

Lattimore said Houston was gregarious and was in a good mood, surrounded by friends and family, including daughter Bobbi Kristina.

"She just seemed like she was having a great night that night," said Lattimore, who said he was in shock over her death.

Aretha Franklin, her godmother, also said she was stunned.

"I just can't talk about it now," Franklin said in a short statement. "It's so stunning and unbelievable. I couldn't believe what I was reading coming across the TV screen."

The Rev. Al Sharpton said he would call for a national prayer Sunday morning during a service at Second Baptist Church in Los Angeles.

"The morning of the Grammys, the world should pause and pray for the memory of a gifted songbird," Sharpton said in a statement.

In a statement, Recording Academy President and CEO Neil Portnow said Houston "was one of the world's greatest pop singers of all time who leaves behind a robust musical soundtrack spanning the past three decades."

At her peak, Houston was the golden girl of the music industry. From the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of the world's best-selling artists. She wowed audiences with effortless, powerful and peerless vocals rooted in the black church but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.

Her success carried her beyond music to movies, where she starred in hits like "The Bodyguard" and "Waiting to Exhale."

She had the perfect voice and the perfect image: a gorgeous singer who had sex appeal but was never overtly sexual, who maintained perfect poise.

She influenced a generation of younger singers, from Christina Aguilera to Mariah Carey, who when she first came out sounded so much like Houston that many thought it was Houston.

But by the end of her career, Houston became a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as she had during her prime.

"The biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy," Houston told ABC's Diane Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview with then-husband Brown by her side.

It was a tragic fall for a superstar who was one of the top-selling artists in pop music history, with more than 55 million records sold in the United States alone.

She seemed to be born into greatness. In addition to being Franklin's goddaughter, she was the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston and the cousin of 1960s pop diva Dionne Warwick.

Houston first started singing in the church as a child. In her teens, she sang backup for Chaka Khan, Jermaine Jackson and others, in addition to modeling. It was around that time when music mogul Clive Davis first heard Houston perform.

"The time that I first saw her singing in her mother's act in a club ... it was such a stunning impact," Davis told "Good Morning America."

"To hear this young girl breathe such fire into this song. I mean, it really sent the proverbial tingles up my spine," he added.

Before long, the rest of the country would feel it, too. Houston made her album debut in 1985 with "Whitney Houston," which sold millions and spawned hit after hit. "Saving All My Love for You" brought her her first Grammy, for best female pop vocal. "How Will I Know," "You Give Good Love" and "The Greatest Love of All" also became hit singles.

Another multiplatinum album, "Whitney," came out in 1987 and included hits like "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody."

The New York Times wrote that Houston "possesses one of her generation's most powerful gospel-trained voices, but she eschews many of the churchier mannerisms of her forerunners. She uses ornamental gospel phrasing only sparingly, and instead of projecting an earthy, tearful vulnerability, communicates cool self-assurance and strength, building pop ballads to majestic, sustained peaks of intensity."

Her decision not to follow the more soulful inflections of singers like Franklin drew criticism by some who saw her as playing down her black roots to go pop and reach white audiences. The criticism would become a constant refrain through much of her career. She was even booed during the "Soul Train Awards" in 1989.

"Sometimes it gets down to that, you know?" she told Katie Couric in 1996. "You're not black enough for them. I don't know. You're not R&B enough. You're very pop. The white audience has taken you away from them."

Some saw her 1992 marriage to former New Edition member and soul crooner Bobby Brown as an attempt to refute those critics. It seemed to be an odd union; she was seen as pop's pure princess while he had a bad-boy image and already had children of his own. (The couple only had one daughter, Bobbi Kristina, born in 1993.) Over the years, he would be arrested several times, on charges ranging from DUI to failure to pay child support.

But Houston said their true personalities were not as far apart as people may have believed.

"When you love, you love. I mean, do you stop loving somebody because you have different images? You know, Bobby and I basically come from the same place," she told Rolling Stone in 1993. "You see somebody, and you deal with their image, that's their image. It's part of them, it's not the whole picture. I am not always in a sequined gown. I am nobody's angel. I can get down and dirty. I can get raunchy."

Brown was getting ready to perform at a New Edition reunion tour in Southaven, Miss., as news spread about Houston's death. The group went ahead with its performance, though Brown appeared overcome with emotion when his voice cracked at the beginning of a ballad and he left the stage.

Before his departure, he told the sell-out crowd: "First of all, I want to tell you that I love you all. Second, I would like to say, I love you Whitney. The hardest thing for me to do is to come on this stage."

Brown said he decided to perform because fans had shown their loyalty to the group for more than 25 years. During an intermission, one of Houston's early hits, "You Give Good Love," played over the speakers. Fans stood up and began singing along.

It would take several years for the public to see the "down and dirty" side of Houston. Her moving 1991 rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" at the Super Bowl, amid the first Gulf War, set a new standard and once again reaffirmed her as America's sweetheart.

In 1992, she became a star in the acting world with "The Bodyguard." Despite mixed reviews, the story of a singer (Houston) guarded by a former Secret Service agent (Kevin Costner) was an international success.

It also gave her perhaps her most memorable hit: a searing, stunning rendition of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You," which sat atop the charts for weeks. It was Grammy's record of the year and best female pop vocal, and the "Bodyguard" soundtrack was named album of the year.

She returned to the big screen in 1995-96 with "Waiting to Exhale" and "The Preacher's Wife." Both spawned soundtrack albums, and another hit studio album, "My Love Is Your Love," in 1998, brought her a Grammy for best female R&B vocal for the cut "It's Not Right But It's Okay."

But during these career and personal highs, Houston was using drugs. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2009, she said by the time "The Preacher's Wife" was released, "(doing drugs) was an everyday thing. ... I would do my work, but after I did my work, for a whole year or two, it was every day. ... I wasn't happy by that point in time. I was losing myself."

In the interview, Houston blamed her rocky marriage to Brown, which included a charge of domestic abuse against Brown in 1993. They divorced in 2007.

Houston would go to rehab twice before she would declare herself drug-free to Winfrey in 2009. But in the interim, there were missed concert dates, a stop at an airport due to drugs, and public meltdowns.

She was so startlingly thin during a 2001 Michael Jackson tribute concert that rumors spread she had died the next day. Her crude behavior and jittery appearance on Brown's reality show, "Being Bobby Brown," was an example of her sad decline. Her Sawyer interview, where she declared "crack is whack," was often parodied. She dropped out of the spotlight for a few years.

Houston staged what seemed to be a successful comeback with the 2009 album "I Look To You." The album debuted on the top of the charts, and would eventually go platinum.

Things soon fell apart. A concert to promote the album on "Good Morning America" went awry as Houston's voice sounded ragged and off-key. She blamed an interview with Winfrey for straining her voice.

A world tour launched overseas, however, only confirmed suspicions that Houston had lost her treasured gift, as she failed to hit notes and left many fans unimpressed; some walked out. Canceled concert dates raised speculation that she may have been abusing drugs, but she denied those claims and said she was in great shape, blaming illness for cancellations.

Houston was to make her return to film in the remake of the classic movie "Sparkle." Filming on the movie, which stars former "American Idol" winner Jordin Sparks, recently wrapped.

REMEMBERING DR. BEKO RANSOME – KUTI By: Denja Yaqub

February 10^th 2006, six years ago, not a few were woken up across the world with the shocking news of the passing of a great Nigerian, a very progressive medical doctor, and an internationalist who brought the humaneness of the medical profession to fore with his selfless commitment to the struggle for social justice, human rights and democracy in Nigeria.

Late Dr. Bekololari Ransome – Kuti, pioneer President of the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights; founding Chairperson of the Campaign for Democracy; pioneer co-Chairman of the Labour and Civil Society Coalition (LASCO); former Vice President (1984/85) of the Nigerian Medical Association; co-Convener of the botched 1990 National Conference died after a courageous battle with lung cancer in the early hours of February 10 2006.

Beko, as both the young and old around him, including yours sincerely, called him was one of the finest humanists, patriot, committed human rights and pro – democracy activists Nigeria ever had.

In 1984, few weeks after the military truncated civilian rule in Nigeria, Beko and other leaders of the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) and the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) organized a very successful strike to demand for better condition of service for medical doctor in Nigeria. In fact, the General Mohammadu Buhari military junta got their first confrontation from the doctors, led by Dr. Thompson Akpabio, late Dr. Michael Ekpo, Beko and several others. Even as the military threatened the striking doctors, they remained resolute. The action of the doctors exposed the potency of collective action in the struggle for workers rights, even under the harshest dictatorship. The success of that strike encouraged students under the aegis of the National Association of Nigerian Students led by Lanre Arogundade to embark on mass protests and boycott of lectures across tertiary institutions in Nigeria against the regime’s plan to commercialise education, which the Minister of Education at the time, Alhaji Yerima Abdullahi had announced.

The doctors’ strike of 1984 was what brought the activist part of Beko more seriously to public domain. Otherwise, he was best known as a humanist medical practitioner whose Junction Clinic at Idi-Oro, Mushin, Lagos was home for indigent patients to whom he was always compassionate enough to extend his services without charging what the patient cannot afford. Not a few were treated free of charge.

When the General Ibrahim Babangida military regime rolled out series of anti people, pro imperialist economic policies, of course, Nigerians in their millions reacted with mass protests. That regime was the first to attempt removing subsidy on petroleum. This was accompanied with the infamous Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), a programme forced on under developed economies by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The mass protests led to killings, maiming, arrests and detention of some protesters and their leaders, among them is Femi Aborisade, a very committed trade unionist of the Marxian extraction. The long detention of Femi led to the formation of the Free Femi Aborisade Committee by Beko, Lanre Arogundade, Femi Ojudu (now a Senator), Owei Lakemfa, Sam Omatseye, and several others including this writer. The committee was formed early 1989 in Beko’s living room at number 6, Imaria Street, Anthony Village, Lagos.

As the struggle against SAP progressed, more people were picked and clamped under harsh conditions in detention. Among them were student leaders. Gbenga Olawepo, Gbenga Komolafe, Olaitan Oyerinde etc. Journalists were not left out.

With the growing number of detainees, and the need to create a more radical and membership driven mass organization with focus on human rights abuses, which  had become synonymous with the military junta, the committee was refocused, transformed, enlarged and its name was consequently changed to the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR). This was also in Beko’s living room on the same location in Anthony Village. Beko became the pioneer President with Sam Omatseye as Secretary General (he later resigned and Debo Adeniran replaced him).

Before the advent of the CDHR, Olisa Agbakoba, Clement Nwankwo, Emma Ezeazu, Abdul Oroh (then of African Concord), Richard Akinnola, Innocent Chukwuma etc had formed the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), which had good funding and was well known enough locally and internationally. The CDHR didn’t have the kind of resources needed to engage in massive campaigns against human rights abuses as required. Beko instantly made available his house, clinic and funds to run the organization until funds from membership dues and funded projects started trickling in.

Today, no one can ever disconnect Beko from the history of CDHR as well as human rights and pro democracy struggles in Nigeria as he led us through the trenches of mass protests on the streets of Lagos, Ibadan, Ile Ife, Benin City etc.

Beko was a fragile frail looking but strong man, but never got intimidated by anyone, not even hefty fire arm bearing security agents who regularly came for him. On one of such occasions, Beko and Femi Falana were arrested in a manner that can best be described as kidnap by security agents. They were picked simultaneously in their homes before day break and dumped in separate locations. When they finally found their ways back home, late Prof. Olikoye Ransome – Kuti, Beko’s elder brother who was then Babangida’s Health Minister came to see Beko in his house and asked if he would reduce his activism. As usual, and expectedly, Beko gave his usual disarming smile and replied “This struggle is not a tea party”.

The rare commitment of Beko was shocking to younger activists who dreamt of a revolution that must consume the bourgeois and their lackeys as well as petty bourgeois elements considered to have a robust elite background. Beko fell in the latter category and some of us were suspicious of his involvement in the struggle. He proved everyone wrong. He indeed proved to us that revolutions don’t come suddenly. The state has to be regularly engaged as it unleashes several forms of infractions against the rights of the people and that our collective commitment to confronting the state will eventually lead to changes that will midwife a revolution.

Beko was a colossal unifying personality in the human rights community in Nigeria. Beko was a major facilitator in the unification of labour and the human rights community, which is epitomed in the formation and sustenance of the Labour and Civil Society Coalition. He was co-Chairperson until his death.

As we remember Beko, six years after, we remember a strict time conscious activist; we remember a medical doctor that threw off his stethoscope for the struggles of humanity; we remember a man with robust privileged background who had to leave almost all of his adult life serving and loving the underprivileged; we remember a true hero of the Nigerian struggle whose labour we must never allow to go in vain.

Again, Dr. Bekololari Ransome –Kuti, may your patriotic soul rest in the most perfect peace.

Press Release Suspension of ASUU Strike

                                                                                 February 2, 2012

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) commends the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) for the suspension of   its strike action against the Federal Government on funding and improving standards in our educational system.

The current agreement, which includes funding requirements for revitalizing the universities, progressive increase of annual budgetary allocation to 26% by 2020, amendment of pension/retirement age of those in professorial cadre from 65 to 70 years, and encouraging research by setting up research and development units by companies operating in Nigeria are laudable steps that will facilitate learning and strengthen the educational system in the interest of the nation.  

Of significance in the Agreement is that specific items have processes and   time lines for full implementation. For the revitalization of universities, government has accepted to immediately stimulate the process with N100 Billion and will build this up to a yearly sum of N400 Billion in the next three years.

While it accepted to progressively improve the budgetary allocation to education to 26% from 2013 to 2020, the President is expected to assent to the bill on 70 years retirement age for professorial academics not later than  February 2012. Also, for effective implementation of the agreement, Government is expected to meet with the expanded Implementation Monitoring Committee on quarterly basis to assess progress.

Even as we commend   ASUU and the Federal Government for this momentous Agreement, we wish to call on the government to be sincere and committed to its implementation within the accepted time frame, as reneging or observing the Agreement in the breach may result in the union resuming the industrial action with dire consequences for the country.

We recall that throughout the duration of the strike, which commenced on December 4, 2011, all academic activities were suspended.  In a dynamic world that is essentially knowledge – driven, the impact of this on national development could best be imagined. 

Thus, the Federal Government must approach the implementation of the current Agreement with all sense of responsibility.

The NLC also calls on the Jonathan administration to implement the meagre National Minimum Wage which the President himself signed into law in March, 23, 2011.

Chris Uyot,

Head of Infomration.