Seminar Tasked Public Office Holders On Anger Management

OKONTA EMEKA OKELUM

A one-day Seminar on anger management organized by tropical projects and logistics limited built the capacity of participants on effective management of anger-propelled Situations and circumstances.

The event, which drew participants from the twenty-five Local Government Areas of Delta Sate, had in attendance the Local Government Chairman, Councilors, Secretaries and Supervisory Councilors.

The Organizers effectively used screening of short video clips and group works to help participants gain mastery of effectives anger management techniques, especially during political periods.

The seminar enabled participants to understand anger management issues, such as Anger cues and triggers; Anger management mechanism, Anger management situations in politics; team building process; identification of anger proliferation situations during team building process.

Tropical projects and logistic Limited, Organizers of the seminar cited the objectives of the seminar around two broad issues; which were, first, to resolves differences by looking at alternatives, making meaningful decisions and explaining choices and second, to know that our actions affect ourselves and others, so as to care about other people’s feelings and to try to see things from their points of view.

MDGS: SSG Advocate For Stakeholders Partnership

OKONTA EMEKA OKELUM

At the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Stakeholders Consultative forum held recently by the office of the Special adviser to the Delta State Governor on MDGs, the Secretary to the State Governor, lady (Dr.) Beatrice Omeni, tasked stakeholders on partnership towards the realization of the targets of the MDGs in the State.

Stakeholders at the forum reviewed the performance of the 2008 and 2009 financial years for the Millennium Development Goals – Conditional Grants Scheme (MDGs – CGS) Cycles.

“I congratulate you on the achievement of the 2008 and 2009 financial year, this clearly justifies the importance for partnership among all stakeholders in pursuit of the realization of the MDGs targets” Omeni Said.

“The MDGs-CGS offers a unique channel for special intervention at the grass-root level for making meaningful and direct impact in our rural communities, and for the realization of the state government’s 3 point agenda”, the S.S.G remarked.

The Scheme has been a notable success and has forged a partnership among Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) at the Federal, State and Local Government Areas, also among Civil Society Organizations, media and rural Community Leadership.

The plot to replace Ike Ekweremadu: will it work?

The plot to replace Ike Ekweremadu as the PDP senator representing Enugu West  crystallises in the throwing up of Ogochukwu Agapitus Umunnakwe Onyema by a faction  of the party backed by Governor Sullivan Chime


For Ike Ekweremadu, the Deputy Senate President, these are tough times. Many of his  constituents at Enugu West, which he represents at the upper chamber, are not happy  with him. They complain that his being in power at various levels has not impacted  positively on their lives. Even the people of Mpu, where Ekweremadu hails from in  Aninri Local Government Area of Enugu State, are not pleased with his performance.  They complain that they lack public utilities and cannot travel home due to bad  roads in the area, especially during the rainy season. This is despite their son  having been in government as former Aninri council boss, Chief of Staff to  ex-governor Chimaroke Nnamani, Secretary to Enugu State Government, two-term senator  and Deputy Senate President. To his critics, Ekweremadu is an oppressor whose long  convoy of Jeeps covers them with dust anytime he visits home.

Leading the protest against Ekweremadu is Ogochukwu Agapitus Umunnakwe Onyema, who  has purchased Senate nomination and expression of interest forms from the Peoples  Democratic Party in a bid to challenge Ekweremadu in the senatorial primaries for  the ticket to represent the party in the 2011 election.

UN MOBILIZING AID TO HELP FLOOD-STRICKEN BENIN

The United Nations is mobilizing aid to Benin, where nearly 700,000 people have been affected by severe flooding, with the world body and its partners shortly set to launch a humanitarian appeal to help the flood-stricken in the West African nation.

According to latest assessments, some 680,000 people in 55 of Benin’s 77 municipalities have been affected by the flooding.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported today that water, food and emergency shelter are among the priority needs in flooded areas.

Cholera cases have been reported in some areas, with fears that the epidemic will spread.

OCHA noted that food is being distributed in flood-hit parts of Benin and that several new emergency shelter sites have been identified.

The Office has also allocated an emergency cash grant for tents and to support logistics operations, with a humanitarian appeal for funds to help flood victims under way.

For its part, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will airlift supplies, including tents, from its emergency stockpiles in Copenhagen to Benin in the coming days.

The agency focuses on helping the 7,300 refugees and asylum-seekers in the country, but “we have been called upon to help with the emergency shelter needs of some of the homeless people in the southern parts of the country where we have a presence,” agency spokesperson Adrian Edwards told reporters in Geneva today.

He also expressed concern over the increasing number of people affected by the flooding.

“Seasonal heavy rains have been hitting West Africa for several months and normally last until November,” Mr. Edwards noted. “However, what has happened this year goes well beyond normal flooding for Benin.”

UN 65TH ANNIVERSARY, UN RESOLVES ‘TO DO MORE’ FOR PEACE, DEVELOPMENT

Marking its 65th anniversary, the United Nations has reaffirmed its commitment to promote peace, development and human rights, pledging enhanced action to achieve its global mission.

UN Day is commemorated every year on 24 October, the day in 1945 when UN Charter entered into force.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says the Day is an occasion to reassert the “universal values of tolerance, mutual respect and human dignity,” as well as progress made jointly in the areas of literacy, life expectancy, the spread of technology and advances in democracy and the rule of law.

“But above all, UN Day is a day on which we resolve to do more, more to protect those caught up in armed conflict, to fight climate change and avert nuclear catastrophe; more to expand opportunities for women and girls, and to combat injustice and impunity.”

Mr. Ban also calls for sustained efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals MDGs), the set of poverty reduction and social development targets with a 2015 deadline.

Last month’s MDG summit bringing together scores of world leaders in New York generated political momentum and fresh financial commitments for global anti-poverty efforts, despite the hard economic times the world is going through, he says.

“I am determined to press ahead as the 2015 deadline approaches,” Mr. Ban declares. “Despite our problems, despite polarization and distrust, our interconnected world has opened up vast new possibilities for common progress. Let us commit to do even more to realize the great vision set out in the UN Charter.”

In his message, General Assembly President Joseph Deiss recalls the adoption of the MDGs in 2000, when the world came together to express solidarity with the most vulnerable members of the global community.

“We demonstrated that all the peoples of the United Nations form a single community and that no one has the right to remain indifferent to abject poverty and the suffering of others,” he says.

“We gave great hope to millions of men and women. We now have to unite our efforts to meet these expectations and to keep our promise. This is our moral duty. In so doing, we will make a significant contribution to global peace, security and prosperity, the primary mission of the United Nations,” Mr. Deiss says in his message, which he will deliver this evening at a UN Day concert in the General Assembly Hall featuring the Korean Broadcast System Symphony Orchestra, the Westminster Symphonic Choir and violinist Sarah Chang.

He also stresses that international solidarity, like musicians performing in an orchestra, remains the element that will continue to spur the movement towards achieving the MDGs.

“Music brings us together across cultures and borders to promote peace and harmony. The one who sings does not argue, the one who plays an instrument does not carry a weapon,” the President says.

“To use Plato’s words, we should now let music give soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”

GAZA BLOCKADE CONTINUES TO EXACT HIGH HUMANITARIAN TOLL – UN RIGHTS EXPERT

The people of Gaza continue to suffer from the humanitarian consequences of the Israeli blockade of the area, despite the recent partial easing of the restrictions, a United Nations independent human rights expert said today.

Israel imposed the blockade on Gaza, where some 1.5 million Palestinians live, over three years ago for what it called security reasons after Hamas ousted the Fatah movement in the Strip in 2007.

“The situation in Gaza remains very serious from a humanitarian perspective. The blockade has been eased in some respects, but it has been maintained in other respects, and it continues to put the population there under great psychological and physical stress,” Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, told reporters at the UN Headquarters in New York.

“One has to understand that this population has been trapped in this crowded small area now for three years … and even before then it was a very difficult place to live – largely impoverished, too crowded and a lot of internal chaos,” he said.

Israel’s continued refusal to allow export of goods from Gaza has destroyed its internal economy, and young people from Gaza continue to be denied the right to visit their families in the West Bank and East Jerusalem or to attend universities in other parts of the territories, said Mr. Falk, who presented his latest report to the General Assembly earlier this week.

The Gaza blockade and the accelerated expansion of Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, he said, exact an enormous human cost on every Palestinian. Other practices making the lives of the people of Gaza difficult include demolitions of their houses, evictions and revocation of residency permits.

“But beyond that [it] has made the vision of peace based on the two States consensus, premised on Israeli withdrawal, almost, clearly a political impossibility at this stage,” he said. “You have the disconnect between an intergovernmental peace process that appears to be premised on an illusion, the illusion that at the end of this process is an independent, sovereign Palestinian State.”

In his report, his last in his capacity as Special Rapporteur, the expert reminded the world of the dire situation of residents of the West Bank. “Because so much attention has been devoted to Gaza during the course of the last several years, it is often assumed that material conditions in the West Bank are acceptable,” he said.

But a recent study, he pointed out, has found that in Area C, which is totally under Israeli military control and comprises nearly two-thirds of the West Bank, the conditions of more than 40,000 Palestinians are worse than they are in Gaza.

Presenting his report to the Assembly, Mr. Falk underlined that “the cumulative effects of the settlements, the security wall, and the extensive settler-only road network has been to convert the conditions of de jure ‘occupation’ into a set of circumstances better understood as de facto ‘annexation.’”

He told journalists today that civil society initiatives are an important way to establish solidarity with Palestinian efforts to achieve the right of self-determination, as well as to challenge what he described as the “unlawful dimensions of the Israeli occupation.”

ZONING: A WRONG OPTION FOR NIGERIA

The former Nigerian Senate President Mr. Ken Nnamani ventured into the Zoning Debate this week. He should not have. Mr. Nnamani is definitely one of the eminent Nigerians of this decade. His Senate Presidency displayed a man with a good sense of what National Interest really means. He presided over the senate with integrity and was primarily the last hurdle that stood between Mr. Obasanjo and the third term agenda. He handled it as only a sure footed legislator would.



His reputation soared and he left the senate with his head held high.



By the way Mr. Obasanjo was from his party.



But his journey into the murky field of zoning is a different story any way one looks at it. He defended zoning via the most illogical argument possible. First he says it is the only way an Igbo presidency could emerge. This raises all kinds of headache for everybody. It smirks of tribalism for starters. It gives the impression that he is no longer the great statesman that his senate presidency suggested; that the triumph of the Igbo is the guiding principle in his mind.



Something else is wrong with this line of thought. Is Mr. Nnamani implying that the Igbo cannot compete in Nigerian politics? What is the evidence? They have competed successfully in all other spheres of activity in Nigeria from the football field to economic achievements to educational honors. Why is politics different? He should let the Igbo sink or swim. A hand out is not the solution. If the Igbo have not learned politics, the best place to learn is on the field, playing.



Give a man a fish or show a man how to fish, which works best?



Mr. Nnamani's other idea, that it emanated from the south is not reassuring. I want to accept that he is factually correct. But so what? Should we accept it just because it is a southern idea? What of the merits of the principle? Is it the best way to get the best man or woman to guide the country? That should be the thought that is uppermost in everybody's mind, not the source of an idea.



The most ridiculous concept of all is his assertions is that it benefits the south more than the north. If this were the case, it is enough and sufficient reason to debunk the arrangement. A system that favors one group over the other is bad for the country. We should be advocating a system that does not play favorites, a plan that would give equal access to all Nigerians.



There are other differences among Nigerians than the north/south divide. There are religious differences, not just between Christians and Muslims but within each religious group. How would such differences be resolved through zoning? There is nothing like south or north. The Yoruba is not any closer to the Igbo than he is to the Fulani. Why should it be just north and south and not east and west? One makes as much sense as the other.



If Nigerians want zoning, the first logical step would be to abolish national elections. Let us zone the presidency to the 774 local governments, which would ensure that every area gets a chance to select a president. We can start by casting lots. With this arrangement only local government elections would be necessary. The current N70 billion would be reduced to no more than N1 billion.



What Mr. Nnamani should have said is that an amendment to the constitution of Peoples' Democratic Party should be amended to allow all Nigerian citizens to compete in a free and fair election. If the election always produces only the Aduba's of Eastern Nigeria so be it.



Let the rest of Nigeria figure out how to beat them.



So long as their elections are beyond doubt free and fair.