Ambassador Saidu Pindar dies in car crash in Kaduna State

August 31, 2011

Amb SAIDU PINDAR

On 31 August, Alhaji Saidu Shettima Pindar, Nigeria’s pioneer Ambassador to Sao Tome and Principe, died a car accident. The accident occurred on the Kaduna-Zaria road in Kaduna State.
Details of the accident are yet to be confirmed, but sources said he was traveling to Kano at the time he died. One source said the accident was caused by the bad condition of some spots on the road, but this too, had not been verified.
Ambassador Pindar was born in Biu, Biu Local Government Area of Borno State, on 19 August 1954. He obtained an Electrical Engineering Diploma from Kaduna Polytechnic in 1976, Bachelor of Electrical Engineering Degree from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in 1980, and subsequently a Master’s Degree in Communication Engineering from the University of Manchester’s Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) in United Kingdom.
He started his working life with the Borno State Civil Service, rising to become the Director of Engineering/Chief Engineer at the Borno Radio and Television (BRTV) before transferring to the Federal Civil Service in 1987.

In October 1998, he was posted to the Embassy of Nigeria, Rome, Italy, as Minister-Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary. While on that post, he received commendations from the Italian Ministry of Interior, the Italian Immigration and Frontier Service and a Christian NGO for his commitment towards combating human trafficking and for his compassionate treatment of trafficked Nigerians.

In 2000, he was appointed Nigeria’s pioneer Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Democratic Republic of Sao Tome & Principe. At that post, he was credited with contributing immensely to the ratification of the Treaty establishing the Nigeria-Sao Tome & Principe Joint Development Zone (JDZ). He voluntarily retired from the Federal Civil Service after 32 years of public service. In 2004, he was conferred with a National Honour, Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON).

Even in retirement, he remained active in private business as well as in political and public life. He was the founder and promoter of Maitama Amusement Park, a leisure and entertainment centre situated in the high brow Maitama district of Abuja. He was also the Executive Chairman of Subotech Engineering Ltd, a company supplying and installing broadcast equipment nationwide.

Politically, he was a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). In October 2009, he was appointed by then President Umaru Yar’Adua, into the board of the Nigeria-Sao Tome and Principe Joint Development Authority (NSTP-JDA). He was later the deputy governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Borno State in the April 2011 general elections, but his party did not win.

Ambassador Pindar was a member of several professional bodies, including the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE) and the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN).
He was a founding member of the Biu Emirate Development Association (BEDA) and also the Biu Forum. In recognition of his contributions to the development of Biu Emirate, HRH Alhaji Umar Mustapha Aliyu, the Emir of Biu elevated him from the position of Jarma of Biu to Waziri of Biu in January 2005.

A philanthropist, he sponsored hundreds of students in various schools in Borno, Yobe and Bauchi State under the Shettima Pindar Foundation.
He was happily married and blessed with children.
In a condolence message to the late ambassador’s family, Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima expressed shock over the unfortunate incident. He described the late Pindar as a visionary, humble and de-tribalized man, who dedicated his life to the cause of transforming not only Borno State, but the Nigerian nation.

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NIGERIAN SENDS AN OPEN LETTER TO HIS PRESIDENT

A reader of Africanews.it has sent us an email with this open letter to the president of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan. We publish it here below. These are his own views and we have no responibility in it.

MY LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA. HIS EXCELLENCY GOODLUCK JONATHAN

Dear Mr President,
after a period of hesitation, I decide to write you for an important issue that disturbs every responsible Nigerian.
I am sorry if you would have wanted it to be a private letter but I think that since it represents the preoccupation of many Nigerians, I should make it known to all. I must commence by saying that the situation of my dear country Nigeria does not surprise me.
For instance, already during the electoral campaign that brought you to power, I foresaw the impasse in which we were heading to and I started expressing my doubt on your capacity of running this complicated country. Mr President, from all indication, you could be a good candidate for a country, but I am afraid, it is not for a country like Nigeria.
It might sound hard to hear but your two great errors are hunting you and your regime.
Firstly, you had always counted on your good luck forgetting you do not run a county by luck. Though your good luck helped you to have a weak opposition and indecisive electorates who out of frustration and poverty went for any laudable candidate who you were it does not also permit to be more realistic and quick in action taking.
Your second and most important error is that you counted on the help of the party under which you ran your election but unfortunately the party has neither reputation nor scope.
My dear President, your downfall started just when you accepted to run for such a vital post under a political party without a determined manifesto and plan of action. When you accepted to run for such a post under a party that for more than a decade has ran Nigeria under a day to day planning, I knew the tenure was to be a moon dance like tenure.
Mr President, when you won this honourable post, I was among those who wanted to sit back and see where you will leading this country to, but seeing the pandemonium that is reigning in my beloved country; seeing that the labour of our heroes pas are trying to be in vain, I decided to write you as a loyal and humble citizen of one Republic of Nigeria.
I know that you might be more preoccupied than every other citizen of this country but I am thinking you are yet to understand well the situation of things in the nation. And what pains me most is that your Excellency has very few members of your crew who really are ready to help out matters in the present circumstance. However, I must state that you are not the cause of the Nigerian problem, but the right heir of a disorganized system.
His Excellency, I will not only blame you for your errors but I will also propose what could make your tenure a successful one. As you rightly know that the major problem of Nigeria is security, I must then say that there are situations that only when they are resolved the nation will know peace. However, I would not want to advice you on the matters of policy keeping and employment creation for you are surely aware they are necessities that every nation must redress.
Permit me to say that the techniques applied till now on the matters of crime fighting in Nigeria have not yielded enough fruit for reasons that are very simple.
In one of our last article, “Why neither FBI nor CIA might be able to help Nigeria resolve her security problem” We were trying to show why the differences in the duration of time necessary for the discovery of an author of a terrorist attack from one country to the other.
His Excellence, it occurs to me very often to ask myself why we spend huge amount of money buying helicopters and arms to fight those we do not know their identity? Do your security advisers ask themselves why proves of robbery and other crimes serve less in the identification of their perpetrators? How can one prove that a man whose birth was not registered and who has no electoral card exist? What does a finger print left on a dead body serve to the police who have no digital record of the citizens? How do you determine that a man declared death is dead in a country where there is no death registration? How can you know a citizen in a country where there is till now no National Identification Card? Does it occur to His Excellency that these are the secrets behind crime fighting? How many telephone numbers has an average Nigerian? How could the police trace a caller in a country where millions of telephone numbers are not registered and are changed as clothes?
Mr President, should I continue to mention the irregularities that mar the work of security agencies in Nigeria, it will never be exhausted.
All these and other related problems are the reasons that permit all sorts of evil in Nigeria, ranging from robbery, kidnapping, bombing and so on. And as long as there is no new redress of the system, there will be no progress in crime fighting.
Though I know it will take much to change the mentality of the people; though it might need many years of sensitization, I think it is a sin non qua non to crime fighting. Mr President, you might not be understood as you start this crusade but I think the nation need to be identified.
We need to register all new born babies obligatorily, we need to declare every death that occur in the nation, we need to have citizens that move about with their identity cards; citizens that identify themselves to the police at necessary checking points.
We need a country where the security agencies have dignity, a place where they know their duties and rights.
Finally, I would advise you, as a loyal and humble citizen of Nigeria, to be man enough to assume your office as the President elect of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
You should forget some of your friend who are not helping out matters in the building of the nation; you should abandon some outdated individuals who continue hunting your tenure. Call it your duty to make a history or tarnish the image of the nation by remaining inactive and insensible to the national plight.
Thanks Mr President as you make the best decision of your tenure in listening or not listening to this plea.

Yours faithful and humble citizen,
ALI Nnaemeka Cornelius.
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AFRICANEWS

Nigerian Immigration Service And Beneficiaries Of Harvested Human Spare Parts

By EKAIWE IGINUA OSEMWEKHA Last updated: 10/13/2011

ON the 22 September, 2011, the New Comptroller of Immigration, Edo State Command paid a courtesy visit to the Benin Monarch.

He intimated the monarch of the new wild dimension in human trafficking to include the harvesting of human kidney of illegal immigrants in a bid to making a living in Europe and other developed countries of the world.

For the Europeans who have been undergoing diaralaces without a donor of kidney, it is the best development that can happen in their demand of stay alive.

The Boko Haram syndicates affiliated to Al’Quada are systematically gathering steam of acceptability by some traditional rulers who gave land to them without suspecting their sinister motives. This Islamic extremist could eventually constitute themselves into an army of suicide attacks on the humdingers in the society.

The borders of Nigeria with Chad Republic, Niger and Camerouns are very porous, thus creating an easy passage way for some Al’Queda militants who are anti American and the United Nations.

These people have been brain washed to believe that for any successful attack made on western civilization and education, create an Ode to heavenly acceptability

The immigration also frown at the trafficking on children and women. A palace chief who will like to remain anonymous said; “Many children those days have been forced into unwanted labour due to poverty while some people are now bluffing with unmerited wealth stolen from state allocations. So, this type of restrained inequality is the driving force for under age labour.

Some European countries and America are enjoying prosperity, while hundreds of millions of Africans live in abject indigent.

God had created a universal world of great prosperity. The United Nation records states that some countries cannot consume all their products and it was estimated that in 2004, the aggregate total value of goods and services input in that year alone exceeds $65 trillion. If we are to spread this by aggregate world income per capital, it will amount to approximately $9,000 for every individual now living in this planet earth.

This so-called universal prosperity is a clog in the wheel of progress for mankind. With reference to the recent article by the United Nations, the money in the hands of just three persons is more than the aggregate gross domestic product of the forty eight most impoverished countries. It stated that many poor individuals eke a living by surviving on just $2 daily. Millions of those people have no access to portable drinking water and cannot afford one square meal a day.

The hazards posed by migrant Fulani cattle rearers who might have links with Boko Haram and Al’Queda cannot be under-estimated. In a bid to exploring areas for grazing their animals they move from the nook and crannies across the state. And in the course of this endless migration, the animals defecate in all their foot path.
Researchers have proved that animals waste contain similar bacterial as human waste. So, indiscriminate dump of cattle waste by the river bank could fast track bacterial mobility – to water consumers in the rustic environment.
About 80% of population today is without safe dependable water and the consequences are enormous. No fewer than a thousand people are killed annually through water related diseases, such as Bihazzia which afflict so many people, Filariases the world biggest causes of blindness affecting so many people in the northern parts of the country. Dysentery, cholera and typoid continues to destroy human lives. Contaminated water is usually responsible for the menance of those disastrous bacterials.

It had been confirmed by experts in their survey of many delvoeping countries that about 95% of all infant mortality could be avoided through safe water utility and refuse disposal by keeping our cattles in approved cattle ranches across the country.
Retrospectively,the Benin female youths and adults were becoming notorious by jumping Italian Immigraiton regulations. Their major concen was to join the band wagon of the successful Roman prostitutes. They were oblivious of the health hazards of such venture and many of them became afflicted with diverse sexual infections. So, many did not live to enjoy the so-called money they had acquired.

However, it should be abundantly clear that the Benin man is a very proud man and do not encourage their women to live such lives which is antitetical with our cultural valure.

In our youthful days, it was a taboo for a stranger to cross the leg of a married women seating down on a mat nor can a none member of the royal family touch the wrapper of the king.
So, when a Benin woman weds according to our native law and custom, it is a congregational prayer that God and our ancestors should join husband and wife as partners, that will become a shinning example to others who are yet to go into this life long institution and not to become a Roman prostitute.

When the senate president, Senator David mark, paid a courtesy visit to the Benin Moanrch on the 23rd September, 2011, he made a postivie remarks about the pragmatic actions taken by the Nigeiran Ambassador to Italy, Crown Prince eheneden Eradiauwa towards changing the negativ image of the Ngierian girls in Italy.

We are quite optimistic that before his tenure elapses there would be positive changes about the life style of our girls in italy.

 news  from :http://nigerianobservernews.com/13102011/features/features2.html