How Assistant police commissioner tortured me over plot of land in Lagos – Pastor

Pastor Johnson Dominic of the Celestial Church of
Christ, CCC, New Jerusalem Parish, Onosa
Avenue, in Lagos State has accused an Assistant
Commissioner of Police, ACP, Dr. Emmanuel Eze
of allegedly torturing him.
Dominic, who has since been hospitalized, has
alleged he was brutalized around 5pm on Tuesday
by the ACP and his aides, who came to Onosa
community in the Ibeju Lekki area of the state in a
jeep.
According to the victim, who is the head of the
CCC, he was assaulted on the premises of his
church because he refused to pay up some money
which he owed the ACP who had some plots of
land in the area.
The Punch reports that Dominic, a father of three,
was said to have bought one of the plots of land
for N1.2m, but Eze, the ACP, Medicals, in Bayelsa
State Police Command, allegedly demanded more
payment.
Dominic said, “It was around 5pm that the ACP
and his men came to my church. I was attending
to some people, who came for prayers. He came
to inspect his land.
“We had known each other for some years. The
ACP bought 16 plots of land beside my church
and he had always asked me to monitor them for
him.
“I asked him to remove his shoes because he was
on the church premises. He got angry and
slapped me. His aides dragged me on the floor.
They beat me until I became unconscious. That
was how I found myself in this hospital,” Dominic,
who sustained injuries in the chest and head,
added.
The 44-year-old pastor was then rushed to a
private hospital in the Jakande, Lekki Phase 1
area, where he has been admitted.

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SON seizes N100m cooking gas cylinders

Timothy Adewuyi

The Standards Organisation of Nigeria has
impounded six container loads of
substandard Liquefied Petroleum Gas
products in Lagos.
The Director, Inspectorate and Compliance
Directorate of SON, Bede Obayi, an engineer,
said this while addressing newsmen on the
activities of the organisation on Thursday.
Obayi, who said the seized cooking gas
cylinders were imported by Amaze Company
from China, added that the interception of
the consignment was achieved by SON with
the collaboration of the men of the Nigeria
Customs Service.
While conducting newsmen round the
impounded consignment at the SON
warehouse in Ogba, he said the gas
cylinders were in 12.5kg and 6kg sizes.
Obayi alleged that preliminary observation
had shown that the company had unlawfully
used SON logo on the brands without the
agency’s approval.
“The importer falsified documents and
cheated to bring in the products without due
process,” he said
He said SON would take a stringent action
against the company to serve as a deterrent
to unscrupulous importers.
According to Obayi, SON has been
sensitising Nigerians to substandard
products generally and LPGs particularly on
account of the critical nature, and the
implication of substandard products on the
economy.
“Safety is critical in cylinder manufacture
and handling. These are products that
starting from the cylinders to valves,
burners, clips, regulators and hoses are
critical in the chain. If any of these
components is not properly processed, you
will have a problem. Cracks in the pipes
could mean leakages; if the regulator is not
the right one, and it doesn’t regulate the gas,
it will continue to flow and it could become a
big problem,” he said, adding that it called
for more caution on the side of all
manufacturers and importers.
He reassured Nigerians of the readiness of
the agency to continue to safeguard lives
and property.
Obayi also disclosed that the confiscated
LPG products were picked from the Tin Can
Ports adding further testing, investigation
and due diligence would be done to ensure
that consumers got value for their money.

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NAF helicopter tumbles after landing in Makurdi

John Charles, Makurdi

One of the aircrafts from Presidential fleet
recently handed over to the Nigerian Air
Force on Thursday tumbled after it had
successfully landed at the air force base in
Makurdi, Benue State.
Our correspondent reliably gathered from an
insider from the Air Force base that the
helicopter marked Augusta AW101
tumbled after it had successfully landed.
The source, who pleaded not to be
mentioned said, “It was not a major crash,
what happened was that the helicopter had
landed but suddenly moved up and then
tumbled .”
It was gathered that only the flight engineer
was on board and did not sustain any
serious injury.
But when contacted, the Air Force, Public
Relations Officer, Makurdi, Okon Bassey, said
he was not aware of the incident because he
was undergoing a course in Lagos. He,
however, gave our correspondent the
telephone number of his assistant.
The assistant, who simply identified himself
as Gambo when our correspondent called
him on phone, said that nothing happened at
the base.
“It is all rumour, many people have been
disturbing us concerning this thing but I can
confirm to you that nothing happen,” he
said.

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How to avoid running multiple accounts you don’t need

Nike Popoola

Most people need some sort of current or savings account, whether it’s at a traditional bank, microfinance bank or a brokerage company. But most people don’t need multiple bank accounts that serve more or less the same purpose, according to bankrate.com.

Indeed, there are good reasons not to open extra bank accounts, even if an interest rate bonus or other attractive perk is on offer, an associate professor and director of graduate personal financial planning programmes at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Conrad S. Ciccotello, says.

The bottom line is that most people should “fight the temptation” to open more accounts and reflect on whether the accounts they’ve already opened are necessary, Ciccotello says.

“If you can open one less account, do it,”he says.

Reasons not to run multiple accounts you don’t need:

• Risk identity theft

Experts have said that the more bank accounts you operate, the riskier it is for you to become a victim of identity theft.

“The more accounts you have, the bigger the risk of identity theft and the more monitoring you need to do. More accounts also mean more maintenance fees and more potential for inactivity fees or overdraft fees,” Ciccotello says.

• Bank account fees add up

Fees are a top concern. That’s because multiple small fees can and do add up over time and have “a corrosive effect” on the account balance, according to Ciccotello. Consider that a N150 monthly fee on one account adds up to N1,800 each year. Multiply that by, say, three accounts and the total jumps to N5,400. The easiest way to save N3,600 is to not open those extra accounts.

Years ago, people who had large sums of money in deposit at one institution often had carte blanche to open multiple accounts on which the fees would be waived, says Gregory B. Meyer, community relations manager at Meriwest Credit Union in San Jose, California, United States.

But today, few institutions are so generous. One reason is that banks incur costs for paper, printing, postage and processing to send out monthly account statements and those costs put another dent, however, small it may seem, in the institution’s bottom line. More loans are, in fact, more valuable to a bank than more deposits are.

• More accounts may mean more infractions

Another problem of multiple accounts is that different banks have different policies with respect to deposits, payments, withdrawals, interest rates and so on. Someone who opens multiple accounts at different institutions and becomes confused about the different policies can easily incur extra costs for a long list of services or infractions.

“Multiple accounts in multiple places means multiple disclosures in fine print,” Ciccotello says.

Some people try to use multiple accounts as a substitute for proper bookkeeping, but that’s not a good practice, says Meyer, who saw the pitfalls of this approach during his 23 years in banking operations.

“A lot of people had rental homes, and they had a separate account for each home, or they had an apartment building, and they had a separate account for each renter,” he says. “These are really people who just don’t understand how to do proper bookkeeping.”

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