The wife of Tiger Woods will miss out on more than $50m if she pursues an immediate divorce because of his string of affairs, top lawyers have told The Sunday Telegraph.
Raoul Felder, a celebrity divorce attorney, whose client list has included the former wives of Martin Scorsese and Tom Clancy, said Elin Nordegren would be ”financially ill-advised” to walk out on Woods for good.
Nordegren, 29, was widely reported last week to be ”100 per cent” set on a divorce and in line to receive more than $100m in one of sport‘s most expensive separations.
But Felder said if she divorced her husband now, she would be entitled under Florida law to only the sum agreed in the pre-nuptial agreement before the couple married in 2004 -- believed to be $20m. Woods, the world‘s No. 1 golfer, would also have to pay child support for their two-year-old daughter and baby son.
By contrast, her legal team started negotiating a lucrative post-nuptial deal just days after the sex scandal surrounding her husband erupted three weeks ago. Lawyers familiar with the talks said she could be paid up to an additional $55m to remain with Woods, 33, for two more years.
Nordegren has moved out of the family home near and is expected to fly to her homeland of Sweden with the children for Christmas.
The Minister of Agriculture and Water Resources, Dr. Sayyidi Abba-Ruma, has said the absence of President Umaru Yar’Adua from the country is not a new thing.
The minister, who is believed to be a strong member of the President’s inner circle, also said those playing politics with the President’s absence were doing so in order to gain advantage in the 2011 elections.
Abba-Ruma said this in an interview with journalists in Abuja on Monday.
He said there was evidence that those agitating that the President’s absence had created a vacuum were doing so for selfish political reasons.
The minister, who was Secretary to the Katsina State Government while Yar’Adua served as the governor, said that there was a time when a military ruler in Nigeria was away from the country for a long time.
According to him, the military ruler’s absence did not ground the country.
He said, “There are developments that have taken place in Nigeria that are factual, on record and are obtainable.
“The most important thing is that I will advise that we should, as much as possible, remove the whims and caprices of our emotions for public good.
“Let us not hold the Nigerian public to ransom; let us not continue to deceive them but educate and enlighten them because we have the opportunity, with information at our doorsteps today.”
Responding to a question, the minister said, “What you are asking is not really strange but it is something that has a lot of information available on ground and it has been so repeatedly made public. I cannot understand why the whims and caprices of our emotions should not be detached from the public good.
“There is no way we can advance unless our individual selfish requirements are divorced from reality.
“All issues that have been raised are not correct I am just corroborating what the Minister of Information and Communications (Prof. Dora Akunyili) has said.”
He said the Federal Executive Council had spoken publicly about the President’s health “and references have been made also to situations like this.
“A president of Nigeria was ill at one time although during the military era and had to seek medical attention for about three months. Where were you? It is not too long ago. Where were you? The information is also at your doorstep. What has happened?
“It is not also sufficiently correct to say that things are at a standstill. You cannot provide evidence to that effect.
“I think it is high time we realised that Nigerians should be fed with what should be proactive to our democracy and what will be good for the country.”
The minister dodged a question about why Yar’Adua did not hand over to Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan before travelling to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia for medical attention.
According to him, “The Minister of Information and Communications is in a better position (to answer that). But as a member of the Federal Executive Council, having known that this issue has been addressed and made public, it is important to try to remove the emotion of the human mind, especially as we are getting close to 2011 and there are indices that Nigerian politics is involved.
“But we always believe that we must always try as much as possible to locate ourselves to the reality; that means looking at the nation as being more important than individual interest.”
Two governorship aspirants in Anambra State, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo of the Peoples Democratic Party and Dr. Chris Ngige of the Action Congress, on Monday walked out on the state Governor, Mr. Peter Obi, during a debate organised for them.
The debate, which held in the state capital, Awka, ahead of the February 6, 2010 governorship election in the state, was meant for candidates to present their manifestoes to the people of the state.
The debate was organised by the Anambra State branch of the Nigerian Medical Association and held at the Emmaus House, Awka.
The four candidates present were the governor, who is the candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance; Ngige; Soludo; and the candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party, Dr. Mike Ejezie.
The debate was nearly marred by a low turnout of candidates and the ego displayed by the contenders present. Only four out of the 25 candidates honoured the invitation.
Obi was the first to arrive the venue of the debate but left after he found out that other candidates were yet to come. He came a second time and left again because it was only Ngige and Soludo that had sat on the podium.
When Obi did not return early, the organisers threw the debate open to Soludo, Ngige and Ejezie. The three then spoke for five minutes each.
It was while Soludo was rounding off his address that Obi came in with a crowd of supporters, who held up proceedings for more than 10 minutes, praising him.
After Soludo rounded off his speech, Ngige took over, and then moved out of the hall just as Obi was going to be called upon to speak.
Ngige, whose exit created a commotion, was apparently not ready to listen to Obi because he felt that the governor did not grant him the same courtesy.
Shortly after, Soludo got up, shook hands with some members of the audience and left the stage, with his supporters in tow.
The hall was almost left empty before Obi’s supporters surged forward to fill the seats on the front row.
To make matters worse, public power supply was cut off just as Obi took the microphone.
Obi, however, explained that he had come in late because protocol demanded that he should be the last person to speak, being the governor.
The speakers were very jovial and lively as they made light-hearted references to one another. One of such was when Soludo said he would adopt informal policing to fight insecurity in the state.
He said though he would not disclose the details of the plan, Ngige would know a little of it because he (Ngige) and Soludo’s father were at different times victims of kidnappers.
In his presentation, Soludo said that if elected as governor, he would raise the economy of the state to become the largest in the country.
He said that he would have to do this through an ambitious power supply programme.
He said the surest way to fight insecurity was to provide jobs. He said he would provide between 300,000 and 500,000 jobs within his first term in office.
He said the Igbo had no business being in a party that was not in the mainstream of politics and advised them to join a national party.
He appealed to Ngige to return to the PDP because “hooligans and rogues that dominated the party in Anambra State had been chased out and sentenced to hard labour.”
He said he would deploy the same skills that he used as Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria in fixing the problems of Anambra State.
In his address, Ejezie said that by exploiting the mercantile nature of the people of the state, he would use the Onitsha Main Market to engineer Anambra’s economy.
He said he would do so by building many shopping malls.
Ngige, on his part, said the much talked about development in the state would not take place unless basic things like roads, infrastructure and security were put in place.
He disagreed with Soludo that Igbo people should move to the PDP, describing the party he co-founded as a “dying party.”
He said the best state governments in Nigeria today were not controlled by the PDP.
Obi lamented the state of affairs in Anambra when he assumed office in 2006. He said the state lacked improtant facilities such as a government house; governor’s lodge; as well as base maps for the three major cities.
He also said there was no master plan and that the state was in arrears in paying salaries and pensions.
He said he had to delve into developing all sectors simultaneously because the United Nations defined development beyond merely focusing on one area.
Dr. Andy Uba of the Labour Party; Mrs. Uche Ekwunife of the Progressive Peoples Alliance; Prince Nicholas Ukachukwu of the Hope Democratic Party; and Chief Okey Nwosu of the African Democratic Congres were some other top contenders that were absent from the debate.
A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mr. Sebastian Hon, on Monday criticised the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Michael Aondoakaa (SAN), for misleading Nigerians on ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua’s powers.
Hon, who spoke to our correspondent in Port Harcourt , Rivers State, said the 1999 constitution did not make room for the vacuum created by the President’s absence from the country.
While sympathising with the President over his health condition, he argued that Aondoakaa’s position that Yar’Adua could rule from his sick bed was unconstitutional.
He also disagreed with those that had argued that since Yar’Adua did not write to the National Assembly before travelling to Saudi Arabia for treatment, a vacuum had been created in the Presidency.
He stated, “I strongly disagree with that position and the position taken by the Attorney-General of the Federation, that Yar’Adua can rule from his sick bed or anywhere outside Nigeria.”
He warned against attempts to interpret the constitution to create a vacuum in the leadership of the country.
He called on Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan to take over the running of the country until Yar’Adua’s returned.
Citing the ruling of the Supreme Court in the case of Muhammadu Buhari vs Olusegun Obasanjo (2004) FWLR (Pt. 101) 1487 at 1506-1507, he said there was no vacuum in the government.
He also referred to former Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Andrew Obaseki’s 12-Point Rule in the case involving the Attorney-General of Bendel State and the Attorney-General of the Federation, (1981) 10 SC 1.
He said, “Nobody should therefore wrongfully rely on the provisions of Section 145 of the constitution to claim that since the President did not officially write to the National Assembly, the vice-president is not the Acting President.
“Such interpretation will amount to using a constitutional provision to achieve an unconstitutional result, which is not permissible under our constitutional jurisprudence.
“Section 141 of the constitution has set up the office of the vice-president; while Section 84 stipulates that he be paid salaries and section 146 (1) gives him the right to assume office of the President under circumstances stipulated thereunder.”
Based on these, he argued that under the country’s constitutional framework, the vice-president was not supposed to be an outsider to the Presidency.
Having been duly elected by the people, he insisted that Jonathan should not operate at Yar’Adua’s mercy.
Continuing, he said, “Since he was elected by Nigerians, who are also paying his emoluments, an unconstitutional result will be achieved if he is rendered lame duck only as it pleases the President.”
Even in ordinary parlance, he argued that the word “vice” meant “in place of,” meaning that Jonathan could act in the place of Yar’Adua.
He said the need for Jonathan to take over was also part of an implied delegation under constitutional jurisprudence.
“I insist that Vice-President Jonathan is the Acting President of Nigeria and should go about acting as such very boldly and unhindered,” he concluded.
Ten days to the expiration of the deadline for 6,000 Megawatts power generation, Power Holding Company of Nigeria, on Monday said power generation had climbed to 3,500MW from 3,000MW, as gas supply improved to the power stations .
The company’s Executive Director, Operations, Mr. John Ayodele, confirmed to our correspondent on Monday, that generation had been steady on an average of about 3,500MW for three days.
On Friday, peak generation was 3,570MW, while the lowest generation recorded on that day was 3,047MW.
On Saturday, morning peak generation was said to be 3,451.5MW.
It was also gathered that peak generation on Sunday was about 3,500MW.
Our correspondent learnt that the improvement was achieved because of increase gas supply to the power stations by the Nigerian Gas Company.
Ayodele said, “Significant increase in power generation was due to improvement in gas supply to Egbin/AES, Delta and Omotosho power stations, and also the restoration of gas supply to Sapele and Geregu.”
It was also gathered that peak generation on Sunday was about 3,500MW.
Our correspondent gathered that generation at the Lagos Thermal Station, Egbin, and AES, climbed to 900MW on Sunday from 500MW earlier.
