Daily Watch – House leadership crisis continues, EFCC boss replaced

10th November 2015

  • The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has inaugurated the 96 special and standing committees of the Nigerian lower legislative body. However, the inauguration ceremony confirmed that the leadership crisis in the House is far from over. The Majority Leader, Femi Gbajabiamila, who has accused Dogara of undermining the offices of the principal officers in the process of constituting the committees, led his loyalists within the majority APC to boycott the inauguration. APC legislators have complained that the nature of the composition of the committees favoured the opposition PDP. Of the 96 committees, APC got 48 committees, PDP got 46, including some of the choice committees such as Petroleum (downstream and upstream), Gas, Aviation, Army, Works and Foreign Affairs.
  • The Central Bank of Nigeria has imposed a N4 billion fine on Skye Bank Plc for failing to render appropriate returns on accounts of some government institutions and agencies. According to Skye Bank, the fine imposed by the CBN was misdirected since it did not conceal any information of the accounts. Skye Bank claimed that a significant portion of the money for which penalty was applied belonged to the NNPC’s Pension Funds and National Assembly Legislative Aides’ account balances.
  • President Buhari has fired the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Lamorde. Lamorde, a former police officer, was removed four years after he took over as chairman of the EFCC. He worked earlier as the director of operations before he was appointed head by President Goodluck Jonathan on November 23, 2011, after his predecessor, Farida Waziri, was removed.
  • The Abuja Electricity Distribution Company has been sanctioned sanctions for negligence that resulted in the electrocution of an eight-year-old girl, Faith Yakubu, at Anguwan Dodo, Gwagwalada, in the Federal Capital Territory. AEDC was fined N18 million by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission. NERC said the accident occurred when a staff of AEDC disconnected the wires feeding the residence of one of its consumers over alleged non-payment of accumulated electricity bills. Little Faith died, while a four-month-old strapped to her back survived.