New York - The Canadian high Commission in Nigeria has refused visa to service Supreme Court Justices of Nigeria, in addition to also foot-dragging or outrightly refusing visas to several Senate Judiciary delegations from Nigeria to Canada.

The Deputy Senate President,  Ike Ekweremadu, made this known in New York, as the head of the Nigerian delegation to Canada for bilateral talks with the leadership of  the Canadian  parliament.

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Abuja - SENATOR Nuhu Aliyu, a retired Deputy Inspector-General of Police, stunned his colleagues yesterday when he declared on the floor of the Senate that the National Assembly had, as some of its members, fraudsters.

He said he even had in his possession a list of such legislators he investigated for Advanced Fee Fraud (a.k.a 419) while he was in the police.

The Senate President, David Mark, however, stopped him from going further, saying the matter had been referred to the Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions.

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Vanguard (Abuja) - Immediate Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, will soon be probed by the upper legislative body - the Senate, over a $500 million USD loan taken from  the Chinese bank for a rural telephone project despite his government’s claims of rapid privatization of the communication sector.

Amidst concern that Nigeria’s debt burden is increasing again despite the debt pay off agreement between Nigeria and the Paris Club of debtor nations two years ago, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Communications, Mr. Sylvester Anyanwu, said the senate was worried that the project was conceived at a time the Federal Government had already given license to telecommunication companies for the nationwide coverage of the country.

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ThisDay (Lagos) - The daughter of former president Olusegun Obasanjo (OBJ) and sitting Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Senator Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, has been linked to a fradulent N3.5 billion contract in the power sector, while her father, President Obasanjo, was still at the helm of the nation’s affairs.

The matter, presently at the International Court of Arbitration  in Paris, France, involves an Austrian company, M. Schneider, which has petitioned the Presidency, ICPC, Code of Conduct Bureau, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Ethics, and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over what it called the “fraudulent, corrupt and criminal nature involving Senator (Mrs) Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello (alias Mrs Damilola Akinlawon), then serving as a Commissioner with the Ogun State Government”.

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Abuja - The Minister of Finance, Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, has been instructed by the Upper legislative body, the Senate, to recover over N300 billion from his fellow Ministers, currently held in secret bank accounts.

The recovered “loot” according to the dismayed legislators must be added to the 2008 budget presented by President Musa Yar’Adua. The legislators were surprised that such funds were not captured in the 2007 budget ‘because they were buried in private bank accounts to yield interest for them [Ministers]’.

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