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Be painstaking when :

1) You respond to God's faithfulness rather than impulse.

2)You read God's Word to evaluate the contents of your spiritual food and to find fulfillment in life.

3) You take into account the ''budget'' beyond the grace of the supplies.

Above all, don't settle for temporal pleasures and superficial relationships.

Isaiah 55 : 1-11 1 Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 2 Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. 3 Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. 4 Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people. 5 Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee because of the LORD thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel; for he hath glorified thee. 6 Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: 7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. 8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10 For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: 11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.''

Free and fair democratic elections are one of the founding pillars of the United States. The FBI is committed to protecting every eligible citizen’s right to vote. Consistent with past practice, the FBI is providing this information to educate voters about Federal election crimes and how to avoid them, and to encourage voters to report suspected violations to your local FBI field office.

Election Crimes

Election crimes threaten the integrity of elections and undermine public confidence in our democracy. Election crimes fall into broad categories:

Ballot/voter fraud

Campaign finance violations

Civil rights violations, such as voter suppression or voter intimidation

While individual states and localities have the constitutional authority and responsibility to manage their own elections and election laws, an election crime becomes a federal crime when one or more of the following occurs:

A ballot includes one or more Federal candidates

Election or polling place officials abuse their office

The conduct involves false voter registration

The crime is motivated by hostility toward protected minority groups

The activity violates federal campaign finance law

Examples of Federal election crimes include, but are not limited to:

Giving false information when registering to vote

Voting more than once

Changing ballot markings or otherwise tampering with ballots

Vote buying

Threatening voters with physical or financial harm

Intentionally lying about the time, manner, or place of an election to prevent qualified voters from voting

Political fundraising by federal employees

Campaign contributions above legal limits

Conduit contributions/straw donor schemes

Contributions from foreign or other prohibited sources

Use of campaign funds for personal or unauthorized purposes

Distinguishing between legal and criminal conduct is critical for ensuring the integrity of U.S. elections. The following activities are not federal election crimes:

Giving voters rides to the polls or time off to vote

Offering voters a stamp to mail a ballot

Making false claims about oneself or another candidate

Forging or faking nominating petitions

Campaigning too close to polling places

Honest mistakes by poll workers

Lack of immediate election results while ballots are counted

The FBI plays an important role in preventing violations of your constitutional rights, including your right to vote. Report any instances of potential election crimes to your local FBI field office, and ask to speak to an election crimes coordinator.

Voter Suppression

Intentionally deceiving qualified voters to prevent them from voting is voter suppression—and it is a federal crime.

There are various methods which can be used to spread disinformation about voting. Such methods are social media platforms, texting, or peer-to-peer messaging applications on smartphones. Additionally, bad actors may provide misleading information about the time, manner and place of voting. This includes inaccurate election dates or false claims about voting methods like, voting by text, which is not allowed in any jurisdiction.

Do you know when, where, and how you will vote? If not, there are many reputable places you can find this information, including eac.gov and usa.gov/how-to-vote. However, not all publicly available voting information is accurate, and some is deliberately designed to deceive you in order to suppress turnout.

Always consider the source of voting information. Ask yourself, “Can I trust this information?” Look for official notices from election offices and verify the information you found is accurate.

Help defend the right to vote by reporting any suspected instances of voter suppression—especially those received through a private communication channel like texting—to your local FBI field office and ask to speak to an election crimes coordinator.

Scam PACs

Making political contributions can be a powerful way to exercise your First Amendment rights. But some individuals and groups soliciting contributions are bad actors trying to enrich themselves at your expense.

In every election cycle there are billions of dollars invested in political spending. This attracts criminals who use deception to cheat Americans out of their hard-earned money. The FBI assesses that seniors are at a high risk of being targeted.

Scam PACs are fraudulent political action committees designed to reroute political contributions for personal financial gain. This is a federal crime. Signs that a PAC is a scam include the PAC and its website disappearing, and the phone number going out of service.

If you or someone you know has been targeted by a scam PAC, contact your local FBI field office and ask to speak to an election crimes coordinator.

How to Protect Your Vote

Know when, where, and how you will vote.

Seek out election information from trustworthy sources, verify who produced the content, and consider their intent.

Report potential election crimes—such as disinformation about the manner, time, or place of voting—to the FBI.

If appropriate, make use of in-platform tools offered by social media companies for reporting suspicious posts that appear to be spreading false or inconsistent information about voting and elections.

Research individuals and entities to whom you are making political donations. If something seems suspicious, reconsider the donation.  
 

Victim Reporting and Additional Information

The FBI encourages the public to report information concerning suspicious or criminal activity to their local FBI field office. For additional election-related assistance and resources, please visit the following FBI webpages:

Election Crimes and Security

Protected Voices

Source-FBI

The divided tones of labor leaders in Nigeria as the 2023 general elections approaches has been described as a dangerous signal for workers in the country.

This assertion was made recently by an Ex-Officio of the Oyo state council of the Trade Union Congress(TUC), who is a former chairman of the union in the state, Comrade Andrew Emelieze.

''Why should labor leaders be singing discordant tunes? Selfish interests, of course, are dangerous for Nigerian workers, and the proliferation of endorsements can lead to a divided labor movement in Nigeria. Workers should be vigilant,'' Comrade Emelieze stated.

Meeting together with other believers, ensures that we honor the Lord, grow in our faith, and give a strong witness to the world.

Hebrews 10 : 19-25

19 Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, 20 By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; 21 And having an high priest over the house of God; 22 Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) 24 And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: 25 Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

     LOS ANGELES – A Bay Area man and former FBI special agent was found guilty today by a federal jury of conspiring to accept at least $150,000 in cash bribes and other items of value in exchange for providing sensitive law enforcement information to a corrupt lawyer with ties to Armenian organized crime.

          Babak Broumand, 56, of Lafayette, California, was found guilty of one count of conspiracy, two counts of bribery of a public official, and one count of monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity.

          United States District Judge R. Gary Klausner scheduled a January 30, 2023 sentencing hearing, at which time Broumand will face statutory maximum sentences of 15 years in federal prison for each bribery count, 10 years in federal prison for each unlawful monetary transactions count, and five years in federal prison for the conspiracy count.

          Judge Klausner ordered Broumand remanded into federal custody.

          Broumand, an FBI special agent from January 1999 until shortly after search warrants were served on his home and businesses in 2018, was responsible for national security investigations and was assigned to the FBI Field Office in San Francisco.

          According to evidence presented at his 11-day trial, from January 2015 to December 2018, Broumand accepted cash, checks, private jet flights, a Ducati motorcycle, hotel stays, escorts, meals, and other items of value from an organized crime-linked lawyer – identified in court papers as “E.S” and each man acted to conceal the true nature of their corrupt relationship.

          In return for the bribe payments and other items of value, Broumand conducted law enforcement database inquiries and used those inquiries to help E.S. and his associates avoid prosecution and law enforcement monitoring. Specifically, Broumand informed E.S. whether a particular person or entity was under criminal investigation by stating that E.S. should “stay away” from that person or that they were “OK.”

          To conceal the nature of their corrupt relationship, Broumand made it falsely appear that E.S. was working as an FBI source. Broumand wrote reports after the fact to make it falsely appear that he conducted legitimate law enforcement database inquiries.

          In exchange for the illegal inquiries, E.S. paid Broumand at least $150,000 in cash and check bribes, including a Ducati motorcycle and accessories valued at more than $36,000. The bribes were deposited into the accounts for Love Bugs LLC, a Lafayette-based lice-removal hair salon business that Broumand and his wife started in 2007.

          Soon after the bribery scheme began, E.S. asked Broumand to query the FBI database for Levon Termendzhyan, an Armenian organized crime figure for whom E.S. had worked. The database search “rang all the bells” and revealed an FBI investigation in Los Angeles, according to court documents, which note that Broumand accessed the FBI case file on Termendzhyan repeatedly in January 2015. Broumand also allegedly accessed the Termendzhyan FBI case file in May 2016.

          Termendzhyan, a.k.a. “Lev Aslan Dermen,” was found guilty in March 2020 in federal court in Utah on criminal charges related to a $1 billion renewable fuel tax credit fraud scheme. He awaits sentencing.

          In December 2015, at E.S.’s request, Broumand searched a confidential FBI database for information about Sam Sarkis Solakyan, a medical imaging companies CEO, and later warned E.S. to “stay away” from Solakyan, who was “trouble,” meaning that Solakyan was under law enforcement investigation. Solakyan eventually was charged, tried, convicted and sentenced to five years in federal prison for running a scheme that submitted more than $250 million fraudulent claims through California’s workers compensation system.

          In May 2016, Broumand interfered with an FBI investigation into Felix Cisneros Jr., a corrupt special agent with Homeland Security Investigations who also had ties to Termendzhyan. Cisneros was convicted at trial in two different cases. The first trial, in 2018, resulted from Cisneros’s corrupt acts for Termendzhyan. The second trial, earlier this year, resulted from Cisneros’ corrupt acts for E.S. Cisneros is scheduled for sentencing on October 17.

          “Ensuring public confidence in those who investigate and enforce the law is paramount,” said United States Attorney Martin Estrada. “By taking bribes and gifts from a person he knew was linked to organized crime, Mr. Broumand breached the public trust placed in him and violated his oath of office, something which simply cannot be tolerated. The FBI’s agents and staff work tirelessly every day to keep us safe, and I am proud that they partnered with our Office to ferret out this corruption.”

          “The conviction of Mr. Broumand, a veteran FBI agent who chose greed over integrity and turned his back on the oath he swore to uphold, is proof that the FBI will root out corruption of any kind, to include veteran agents within its ranks,” said Don Alway, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office. “This prosecution was the result of hard work by multiple partner agencies to work through the painful truth of having to investigate one of its own.”

          “Broumand conspired with the very types of criminals he was trusted to investigate. Today’s guilty verdict sends a clear message that no one is above the law, and any Department of Justice employee who participates in these types of schemes will be brought to justice,” said Zachary Shroyer, Special Agent in Charge of the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General Los Angeles Field Office.

          “All of us in law enforcement are held to a higher standard and this is no exception,” stated IRS Criminal Investigation Oakland Field Office Special Agent in Charge Mark H. Pearson. “The American public places high expectations on law enforcement to uphold and defend the law. While today is a blemish in our community as Babak Broumand, a former FBI Agent, was found guilty for conspiring, bribery, and money laundering; I want to emphasize and highlight the exceptional professionalism, integrity and dedication demonstrated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation special agents, the Office of Inspector General, DOJ, the United States Attorney’s Office – CDCA, and the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation, for their commitment to upholding the law and seeing that justice is sought in all cases regardless of a person’s affiliation. I want to thank our partners for entrusting us with this investigation, and hope that the American public sees our efforts as an example of what the good men and women in law enforcement represent.”

          The jury today also found Broumand not guilty of one count of bribery of a public official and one count of monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity.

          The FBI, the United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, and IRS Criminal Investigation investigated this matter and were assisted at trial by the Department of Homeland Security, Office of the Inspector General.

          Assistant United States Attorney Ruth C. Pinkel of the Public Corruption and Civil Rights Section and Assistant United States Attorneys Michael J. Morse and Juan M. Rodríguez of the General Crimes Section are prosecuting this case.

Source-FBI

Nigerians have been called upon to report any negative observations about officers and men of the Nigeria Customs Service for prompt action.

This call was made by the Public Relations Officer(PRO) of the Oyo /Osun Command of the service, Mr. Kayode Wey. ''To the public, if they have observed any unbecoming behavior of officers and men, they should forward a proper report to the command. The command will investigate and do what is necessary. Men and officers have been trained to abide by the rules laid before them.

Mr Wey also disclosed that the command had zero tolerance for indiscipline saying, ''the commander ensures that our emblems, uniforms, souvenirs are not sold to unauthorized persons and those who cannot identify themselves with their identity cards. The Customs Police Unit have very effective in their investigations to nip unfortunate circumstance in the bud.

Unfortunately for Nigeria's basic education, there is a dearth of facility to drive Technical Education for our students to be technically sound to meet up with the challenges of technology advancement that drives the present ady knowledge economy.

Technical education drives the economy of all nations currently, but for Nigeria, our economy is artisan driven to the detriment of our political management which b y polarization is hoodlum driven, exposing us to the whims of quackery in all facets of huma endeavor.

This is because of the deficiency of meeting up with the quality and standard expected of every nation in domesticating international instrumnets on global best practices. Quackery and sysem collapse during or after completion has direct correlation based on facility design, specification and materials of inferior quality.

Education must prepare our students for the global market. In Nigeria, education is highly underfunded and has resulted in the myriad of challenges confronting the country presently.

1)We fail to operationalize the affective domain, producin g literature that are deficient content that can inspire change for the better.

2)we blindly commercialize education to the detriment of effecting a cognitive domain that would have launched us into research appreciation for development.

3)We equally neglect the area of pyschomotor domain to produce graduates of rhetoric in the face of the challenges of desing and construction for infrastrcuturer and real development.

4)Our science lack the intellectual and practical ability of observation, mehtod, procedure and experiment for systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural word to the detriment of our benefit.

5)Our engineering lakc home patronage of our graduates for employability challenge of desing, building that are mathematics driven for our graduates to use with relative ease, enignes, machines and structure with retraing through foreign partners.

6)Wile our technology lacks fulk technical education to develop products and produce for the nation due to poor scientific knowledge base to the detriment of right application to change or transform our society for right and correct management of the people and environment.

The whole world,today, goes for quality and standard concept with global best practices. Graduates are trained to be abl;e to compete favorably in the global market.

Where are we in the situation of hoodlum hijacked politics/ democracy and artisan driven economy?

Professionals must be respected to have regard for orgainzational and professional ethics for sanity sake and must equally be respected to be part of decision making for ease of implementation by the government, which must adequately fund education.

The fellows are not effectively utilized by the government while the artisans are not incorporated despite creating a viilage for them. Fellows need to be consulted for services while the orientation of teh artisans need to be changed through short term proficiency courses to benefit the nation.

The Federal Government has been charged with motivating its workforce as a step towards ensuring high productivity. This charge was given on Monday by the Chairman of the Non-Academic Staff Union of Education and Associated Institutions(NASU),University College Hospital(UCH)branch, Ibadan, Comrade Kehinde Abiona.

''The Federal Government should do the needful when it comes to the motivation of its workforce. The government should also make the work environment conducive. But sadly, gardeners still make provisions for provisions, cutlasses them, they buy it themselves. Medical laboratory staff make do with outdated equipment, the same goes for those in accounts, who still apply old methods,,'' Comrade Abiona stated.

He advised members of the union to be contented with their present situation, saying, '' take things easy, don't expect too much, accept what life brings to you and make do with what nature allows you to achieve in life''.

Comrade Abiona appealed to the Federal Government to wake up to its responsibilities, adding,'' we were assured that we would receive the new hazard allowance in January 2022. That is September. We have yet to receive it, we have continued to borrow to sustain our families.''

Similarly, members of NASU at the University of Ibadan have condemned the decision of the Federal Government not to pay them for the period that they were on strike.

They made this position known through their chairman, Comrade Malachy Etim. ''Despite the fact that we fulfilled all the processes before proceeding on strike and despite the fact that we have called off the strike and have since resumed work, the Federal Government is still insisting that it would implement the No Work No Pay rule. This is condemnable. The government is still holding on to our salaries. This is inhuman and insensitive.''

In the same vein, a former Vice President of the Senior Staff Association of Universities(SSANU), Western zone, Comrade Alfred Jimoh advised the government to desist from inducing strike actions, saying, ''human beings are not made for law, law is made for human beings. The Federal Government should apply the law with a human face. Even though we have called off the strike, the government is still holding on to our salaries. How does the government want us to continue working when there is no money?''

In a related development, members of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria(ASCSN) have again called on law enforcement agencies to put an end to the cases of corruption going on in the union.

The concerned members lamented,''we bring to your notice some of the challenges confronting us. Deductions have been made from our salaries by our union and there is nothing to show for it. The rising high cost of living and inflation that we are experiencing in Nigeria HAS NOT HELPED MATTERS. It has been extremely very difficult for us to make ends meet and, as such, workers have gone borrowing. Kindly look into the account of ASCSN.''