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Published
10 months agoon
A small-scale miner in Tanzania has become an overnight billionaire after mining two of the biggest rough tanzanite gemstones ever found.
Tanzanite is found only in the East African country. Tanzania’s government however, bought the book-sized stones weighing 20 pounds (9 kg) and 11 pounds (5 kg) from the miner ‘Saniniu Laizer’ for $3.4 million.
Nile Dam: Ethiopia, Egypt, Sudan agree to AU-led talks Minerals Minister Doto Biteko said on state television the government is buying the rare minerals for preservation.
“We’re signing agreements today in public to facilitate the cash transfer … and the government recognizes Laizer is a new billionaire,” he said.
The two dark violet-blue gemstones, each about 30cm long and 10cm thick, were discovered by miners employed by Saniniu Laizer in a mine in the north of the country.
Speaking in terms of the local currency, Laizer has earned more than 7.74 billion Tanzanian shillings. Laizer said in a televised interview he plans to open a shopping mall and a school for his community.
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“The money that I have received today, I will allocate it to more development activities,” he said. Tanzania is a rich country, President John Magufuli said when congratulating him.
However, Local and international reporting of the discovery has described the miner’s story as a “grass to grace” story saying he “hit the jackpot”.
Laizer runs a substantial mining operation involving more than 200 people, which he has funded with the profits of his extensive cattle and farming businesses, and was not present when the record-breaking discovery was made.
According to one of his managers, Laizer has logistics experts, engineers, geologists who help him in the planning of the operations. He doesn’t himself go to the pit to dig. He has a number of tried labourers who do the mining.
“It’s a really challenging experience. It’s tough of course, working in this dusty area. We inhale a lot of dust and get sick, but we haven’t lost the determination to work. We feel grateful that our boss has finally got these stones. We are planning to have roast meat together when we return to the mining site.” said the manager.
The first gemstone weighed 9.27kg and the second 5.103kg, a mines ministry spokesperson said. Both were found last week, but the discovery only became known when Laizer sold them to the government on Wednesday.
Being generous, He said that 10% of the earnings from the sale of the stones will be distributed among the workers.
The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN has secured three separate interim orders from a Federal High Court in Abuja to freeze bank accounts linked to 194 business entities and individuals in 17 banks.
This was contained in a post by the apex bank on its website yesterday pursuant to the court order. The freeze orders were sequel to three exparte applications filed by the apex bank seeking a mandatory order of the court to ask the 17 banks to freeze the account of the business organizations and individual pending the outcome of an ongoing investigation the apex bank had initiated.
In one of the suits against Nuru Abubakar and 24 others, the court granted the request by CBN to freeze the account of the defendants in the banks for 45 days. Justice A.R Muhammed who made the order in his ruling on March 30, 2021, said: “An interim order is hereby made empowering the applicant to direct the head office of the listed banks to freeze forthwith all transactions on the bank account of the defendants for a period of 45 days pending the outcome of investigation and inquiry currently being conducted by CBN.”
In another suit filed by CBN against Sethwealth Ventures and two others, the court granted an exparte application by the apex bank to freeze 50 accounts linked to the three defendants in 13 banks. A similar order was also made in the suit by CBN against Bluebeam Capital Ltd freezing 60 accounts of the company in 13 banks.
The 17 banks affected are Access Bank, First City Monument Bank, Fidelity Bank, Sterling Bank, Keystone Bank, Providus Bank, United Bank for Africa (UBA), Wema Bank and First Bank. Others are Guaranty Trust Bank, Ecobank Bank, Heritage Bank, Polaris Bank, Zenith Bank, Stanbic IBTC Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and Union Bank.
The companies affected include Bluebeam Capital Limited, Sethwealth Ventures, Seasons Bureau De Change, Lat-Ade Logistics, Sani Polo Global Investment Ltd, Saneo Global Resources Limited and Romvic Ventures Nigeria Limited.
Published
19 hours agoon
April 10, 2021
Published
3 days agoon
April 7, 2021The Abuja Geographical Information systems (AGIS), deserves commendation under the current management for its efforts aimed at restoring property owners’ confidence in the department and ensuring corrupt free processes in land allocation in the FCT.
AGIS is the computerized land registry of the Federal Capital Territory Abuja, established since 2003
The department provides a comprehensive, All-Inclusive, state-of-the-Art, computerislsed, geospatial data Infrastructure for the FCT.
AGIS is one of the major creations and legacy of Mallam Nasir El-rufai as Minister of the FCT under former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration.
The establishment of AGIS has restored confidence and added value to landed properties in the city, significantly addressing several crisis related to land scam and racketeering in the FCT.
Before now land allottees had been raising concerns following series of accusations bothering on corruption among staff of AGIS.
Some of the allegations included double allocation, theft of allocation documents, fake allocations, as well as its employees demanding for bribe before performing their statutory duties.
It is, however, worth mentioning here that the narrative is gradually changing under the current management of AGIS.
The management is therefore, working tirelessly to purge out corrupt elements from the system, as demonstrated by its current reforms.
Let me also emphasize that as a trained labour activist, as well as public affairs analyst, you cannot find me praising a particular agency or manager easily, I prefer constructive criticism to bring out perceived shortcomings and for improvement.
I therefore find some of the criticisms against AGIS, judging it based on its past management as unfair, in fact illogical.
I am a witness to the credibility, integrity and sincerity of Alhaji Ibrahim jalo-led AGIS.
Jalo has indeed shown genuine commitment and sincerity in leadership by making indelible marks in his efforts aimed at eradicating corruption in the system.
My recent encounter with AGIS has no doubt erased the negative perception of a corrupt agency that I held because of its past.
I recently had the privilege of observing the organisation closely during a fact finding mission when property documents allocated to a good friend of mine mysteriously got missing.
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My friend had applied for a land in Abuja through the AGIS, like any other Nigerian.
He paid the statutory fee and passed through every normal process to the end; patiently awaiting approval and allocation.
The land was later approved and an allocation letter released to the wrong hand as my friend was to learn later, because he was not notified.
The documents are believed to have been stolen and sold to a high profile personality in this government.
My friend only got to know when some fraudsters attempted to use his details to log into the AGIS portal.
Luckily the officer in charge was smart to dictate an anomaly and so decided to verify by putting a call through to my friend from the contact number he sourced from the initial data capture on the system.
He was to learn later that the land was allocated to him about a year ago, but he never received the documents.
He eventually visited AGIS and laid his complaint through Alhaji Adamu Jibrin, the Director land, and Malam Umar Kuso, the Head of Administration.
Both men immediately swung into action by setting up a committee to unravel the mystery behind the missing land documents.
My friend was invited and appeared before the committee for his testimony.
It was discovered during the probe that a high profile personality bought the land through a middle man fronting for yet to be identified staff of AGIS.
Unfortunately the middle man died earlier this year in a car crash, making it difficult to unmask the suspected employee who stole the documents and gave to the deceased.
It was also revealed that the buyer paid millions of naira for the land documents.
The buyer was also invited by the committee and all issues surrounding the land were laid before him.
He accepted his fate that he was scammed and promised to surrender the documents in his possession to AGIS.
Due to AGIS’ past record and experiences shared by others, my friend was worried and started loosing hope of recovering the land due to the snail speed of the probe, in spite of the committee’s promise to do justice.
I believed them and continue to encourage him to do same” trusting that the management would be just and fair on their findings.
Was hopeful of a positive outcome because a friend who works in AGIS already whispered that the current leadership had zero tolerance for corruption and was doing everything possible to purge out corrupt staff from the system.
I put a call across to AGIS and was granted appointment to meet with the Director Lands, and the Head of Admin.
My meeting with them no doubt yielded fruitful result because we had a very positive discussion which further cleared my doubts that they would be just and fair in handling the matter.
They demonstrated sterling leadership qualities by showing concern and remarkable interest to find the missing documents and prevent future occurrence of such.
The management saw me as partner in progress, not as an enemy, as we continually shared information, leading to the resolution of the issue.
After the submission of the probe committee report last week, my friend was invited and his allocation letter was handed over to him as the genuine owner without paying a dime to anyone as bribe or inducement.
I Therefore wish to call on Nigerians to always verify the position of any information before casting the stone.
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