₦airaland Forum

That's the problem with Amaechi. Those of us who know him too well when he was still feeding off Odili at Pamo know he's one man who will rather destroy the item than share with anyone

Who's he? Never heard of him

In what appears a brazen mockery of President Muhammadu Buhari’s war on corruption to date, a former governor accused of absconding amidst his ongoing fraud trial has been seen attending a rally of Nigeria’s ruling party.

Orji Kalu joined other politicians of the All Progressives Congress in Umuahia to stomp for the party’s candidates ahead of the general elections next month.

The appearance comes amidst pronouncements by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) that the former governor was wanted after departing Nigeria for Germany on purported health grounds in November 2018.

The N7.7 billion trial had remained stalled ever since, although the court fixed further hearing for later this month.

Mr Kalu left office as governor of Abia State in Nigeria’s South-east in May 2007, and has faced allegations he squandered state resources during his reign.

After several judicial manoeuvres which critics said were designed to frustrate his prosecution, the EFCC ultimately reactivated Mr Kalu’s case last year, filling amended graft charges of up to N7.7 billion against him.

At the resumed hearing at the Lagos Division of the Federal High Court on November 5, 2018, the EFCC expressed shock that Mr Kalu had departed the country despite seizing his travel documents.

The former governor’s lawyers said he travelled to recuperate in Germany following a surgical operation.

The judge scolded Mr Kalu for departing the country without due notice to the court, and gave him seven days to return to the country for his trial.

Although the matter was subsequently adjourned till November 12, 2018, Mr Kalu failed to show up. He has been reportedly sighted at different parts of the country by those who know him.




Last week, the Buhari campaign announced Mr Kalu as a key member of the president’s reelection committee.

The announcement drew nationwide outrage, even though the politician was not sighted in public.

But at the rally in Umuahia, the Abia State capital, today, Mr Kalu was shown on NTA wearing white clothes with an APC campaign lapel Friday afternoon.

It was not immediately clear why Mr Kalu seamlessly roamed about in the country without being apprehended by law enforcement authorities.

A spokesperson for the EFCC told PREMIUM TIMES the agency was not aware that Mr Kalu was in the country, much less attending a public event.

A spokesperson for Mr Kalu did not return requests for comments Friday evening.

A Trend

The seemingly sloppy manner with which Mr Kalu’s corruption case is being handled suggest that the Buhari administration has not been as enthusiastic in going after corruption suspects in his own political party as he had been with opposition, said political analyst, Sola Olubanjo.

“We have seen cases and cases where the Buhari government turns a blind eye to its allies who have been formally accused of corruption,” Mr Olubanjo said. “But we may say the soft-landing they have given Orji Kalu is the most brazen since 2015.”

Mr Kalu was a member of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party since 1999. He joined the APC in November 2016, and critics immediately added him to a growing list of opposition politicians moving to the new ruling party to dodge trial for fraud.




The PDP was Nigeria’s ruling party from 1999 until 2015 when Mr Buhari became the first opposition candidate to win a presidential election.

Amongst those whose corruption cases have gone cold since joining APC include Abdullahi Adamu and Godswill Akpabio.

While their cases were not entirely dropped by the EFCC, the anti-graft agency, which is under absolute control of the president, has not been vigorously prosecuting them as it has been doing with Femi Fani-Kayode, Olisa Metuh, Nenadi Usman and other opposition PDP bigwigs.

The EFCC has however convicted two major politicians affiliated with the APC: Jolly Nyame and Joshua Dariye. They are now serving jail terms.


https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/305289-wanted-orji-kalu-seen-at-apc-rally-in-umuahia.html

globemoney:
Only the SE is holding zonal rally? Why?

This is 2019 part of the timetable. The rallies and campaigns started in 2018 and he has done Abia state already where he met with the business community and other select publics in Aba.
Then the zonal rally will be in enugu state.
And Anambra will follow suit later in January.
So meeting 3 out of the 5 is not bad.
But you don't know that Peter obi was in IMO state on the 1st for some mini rallies and meetings with the traditional rulers.

But before you criticize those campaigning, where is buhari's timetable .
Hypocrisy is when you criticize another's effort for what your person clearly failed at which you maliciously ignore

Bimpe29:
It seems like South Eastern States are not being Atikulated even with their son as Vice President of the GNWA movement.

Please before you ridicule another's timetable, show me buhari's own.
If going by your logic, it means buhari will only get votes in Uyo since it's the only place he has campaigned.
What you fail to realise is that the rally for Atiku started late last year and hence he has already been to some state's before the 2019 schedule. E.g., he has been to Abia where he met with the business community and other select publics. So you won't see abia again in 2019

globemoney:
SE governors all rejected to host Atiku campaign

But don't you think that before you ridicule Atiku for not covering every state, show us any state buhari has campaigned in. He did one zonal rally in Uyo and parked up

Did anybody else notice that the guy's yearn got to her

I thought it was a lie until I watched it.
You won't see this on nairaland front page

It means he's back and fit cos those on ground said he actually slumped three days ago.

*2019 ELECTIONS AND AMINA ZAKARI*

- Reuben Abati.

President Muhammadu Buhari has promised severally in the lead up to the 2019 general elections, that he would ensure a free, fair, transparent and credible process, and defend the right of the people to choose. But the appointment, literally on the eve of the election of a niece of his, Mrs Amina Zakari as the INEC Commissioner in charge of the National Results Collation Centre has placed a big question mark on that declaration. The attempt to deny any form of blood relation or filial connection between the President and the INEC official is grossly unconvincing. It has deepened suspicions, and exposed the incompetence and insensitivity of those who proposed her for that position in the first place. INEC faces an integrity challenge. It must address it.


Ms Zakari is however, not new to this controversy. For the benefit of those who may not be in the know, yes, she was appointed as INEC Commissioner by President Goodluck Jonathan in July 2010, and yes, yes and yes, she was recommended to him by President Muhammadu Buhari. President Jonathan is very liberal and open-minded about his understanding of democracy and politics. He is the type of person who would ask his opponent to recommend a person to work for him. Weeks to the election of 2015, he was told to clean up INEC and get rid of a certain “Northern cabal” that had seized control of the institution. He bluntly refused. He insisted that the institution should be allowed to function. He, and I probably risk a breach of confidentiality here, was even advised to choose an Igbo man as INEC chair to protect his interest and to reduce the influence of Northerners in INEC. He didn’t listen. He was told that the best way to win election in Nigeria is to put his own people in the electoral commission. He argued otherwise. He wanted to carry every Nigerian along. He paid a heavy price for his nationalism.



The appointment of Mrs Zakari as the head of the INEC collation centre is in keeping with that thinking that in politics, the “end justifies the means”, and that you are better off with “your own people” – a sad reflection of the poor state of our politics and polity, absolutely deplorable. That is why Nigerians are complaining about the Zakari appointment. They can see through what they perceive to be a game. Amina Zakari like Peter the disciple, may have denied President Buhari three times before the cock of election crows, but nobody is convinced. We should step back a little in time to understand why this is the case. When Ms Zakari was appointed acting chair of INEC in 2015, there were similar protests that a conflict of interest was involved.



The outgoing Professor Attahiru Jega recommended someone else as his successor. But the government of the day insisted on Ms. Zakari, and throughout the period that she was in charge, the opposition kept protesting that she had issues of conflict of interest. Professor Mahmud Yakubu was later appointed the substantive chair of INEC, but Ms Zakari again became the issue during the Ekiti and Osun Gubernatorial elections. The opposition complained bitterly that those two elections were rigged. They didn’t want the President’s niece as the head of electoral operations and logistics! She was later moved to the Health and Welfare section. Everyone was relieved. Thus, Mrs Zakari role and presence in INEC under the Buhari government has always been controversial, on account of her reported closeness to the President. In Africa, family relationships count a lot.



Bringing her back to the National Collation Centre is clearly insensitive. The politics of proximity remains one of the major stumbling blocks to development and progress in African countries. On the grounds of religion, ethnicity and filial connections, persons compromise ethical considerations and the rule of law in order to serve primordial interests. Under President Buhari, this politics has been foregrounded and stoutly defended to the consternation of even his own supporters, including as we are now aware, through a leaked audio tape, Minister Rotimi Amaechi who managed his campaign in 2015 and is now doing same in 2019. Amaechi may sound treacherous but he seems to be a truth-soldier. The explanation that Mrs Zakari’s job is simply to provide welfare and logistics at the Collation centre is dishonest. Those who speak for government must learn the first rule of the job: they must learn to think before they open their mouths. Too many persons open their mouths these days, to express opinions on public issues and you wonder whether or not they have a brain. The intervention of the Presidency in the controversy is in my considered opinion, unwise.



The electoral body is supposed to be an independent body. Its internal affairs should not be managed by the Presidency. By rushing to disown Mrs Zakari, the Presidency betrayed its own emotions. INEC is also unnecessarily defensive. It has an obligation to be seen to be above board. Amina Zakari’s statements in the face of public outcry conveys an impression of desperation and raises questions. Must she be the commissioner in charge of the Collation Centre? Should we have two Northerners manning the two most strategic departments in the 2019 election? Is this not a further confirmation of extant complaints about nepotism, cronyism and favouritism? Nobody has questioned Ms Zakari’s competence – she is a pharmacist, and I believe she has an NYSC certificate – she is even a Princess of the Caliphate but is she the only person who can collate results? Certainly there must be other ways in which she can be useful, and given the controversy that has emerged, the INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmoud Yakubu should re-assign her without any further delay. It is the only intelligent to do to put an end to the suspicions.



He should do so to protect the integrity of the 2019 electoral process. The doubts that have been raised about Mrs Zakari’s present deployment will not go away. Even if she is subjected to a DNA test and Nigerians are told that she is not related in any way to President Buhari, nobody will believe it. Even if all she does at that collation centre is to attend to the welfare of local and international observers, nobody will agree. INEC has unwittingly created a credibility and integrity problem for itself, more so as this promises to be one of the most keenly contested elections in Nigerian history. It is definitely not an election that can be collated by anyone remotely believed to be close to the incumbent President. There are just too many family connection stories around the chosen collator. And the matter is as follows: One, even the Presidency through Garba Shehu has admitted that there is indeed an inter-marriage relationship between the President and Amina Zakari. Two: her brother – same father, same mother, is said to be the current Minister of Water Resources. Three: when President Buhari was Chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund, she was a consultant to the PTF. Her elder brother, now the Emir of Kazaure was even a legal adviser to Buhari’s PTF, appointed by Buhari himself. These facts alone rob her of her alleged neutrality. It is simple common sense: Ms Zakari’s talents can be put to less controversial use.



And it is important that INEC listens and accommodates the public outcry around and about Ms Amina Zakari. The bigger argument is about the legitimacy of the entire electoral process. If she remains as the head of the national collation centre, the legitimacy of the election would have been destroyed in the event of Buhari achieving his four plus four ambition. INEC will be accused and rightly so, of match-fixing. I have made this point before now, and I repeat it: the international community is watching, no one should be under the illusion that we are an island unto ourselves. President Muhammadu Buhari has been accused before now of cronyism, and a systematic re-Northernisation of Nigeria, such information as his niece or family relation by whatever label, being appointed the country’s collation officer for the 2019 elections worsens the narrative.



I see Ms. Zakari is tempted to defend her integrity, which is natural, since she is being accused of an offence she is yet to commit. But she should be reminded that Nigeria’s 2019 general election is not an academic exercise. It is a big battle for the soul and future of Nigeria. She needs not turn herself into an issue, and INEC does not need the stain, and she doesn’t need the baggage. To ignore public opinion, an important component of the democratic architecture, is counter-productive for all parties concerned. Her position, let another take.

*2019 ELECTIONS AND AMINA ZAKARI*

- Reuben Abati.

President Muhammadu Buhari has promised severally in the lead up to the 2019 general elections, that he would ensure a free, fair, transparent and credible process, and defend the right of the people to choose. But the appointment, literally on the eve of the election of a niece of his, Mrs Amina Zakari as the INEC Commissioner in charge of the National Results Collation Centre has placed a big question mark on that declaration. The attempt to deny any form of blood relation or filial connection between the President and the INEC official is grossly unconvincing. It has deepened suspicions, and exposed the incompetence and insensitivity of those who proposed her for that position in the first place. INEC faces an integrity challenge. It must address it.


Ms Zakari is however, not new to this controversy. For the benefit of those who may not be in the know, yes, she was appointed as INEC Commissioner by President Goodluck Jonathan in July 2010, and yes, yes and yes, she was recommended to him by President Muhammadu Buhari. President Jonathan is very liberal and open-minded about his understanding of democracy and politics. He is the type of person who would ask his opponent to recommend a person to work for him. Weeks to the election of 2015, he was told to clean up INEC and get rid of a certain “Northern cabal” that had seized control of the institution. He bluntly refused. He insisted that the institution should be allowed to function. He, and I probably risk a breach of confidentiality here, was even advised to choose an Igbo man as INEC chair to protect his interest and to reduce the influence of Northerners in INEC. He didn’t listen. He was told that the best way to win election in Nigeria is to put his own people in the electoral commission. He argued otherwise. He wanted to carry every Nigerian along. He paid a heavy price for his nationalism.



The appointment of Mrs Zakari as the head of the INEC collation centre is in keeping with that thinking that in politics, the “end justifies the means”, and that you are better off with “your own people” – a sad reflection of the poor state of our politics and polity, absolutely deplorable. That is why Nigerians are complaining about the Zakari appointment. They can see through what they perceive to be a game. Amina Zakari like Peter the disciple, may have denied President Buhari three times before the cock of election crows, but nobody is convinced. We should step back a little in time to understand why this is the case. When Ms Zakari was appointed acting chair of INEC in 2015, there were similar protests that a conflict of interest was involved.



The outgoing Professor Attahiru Jega recommended someone else as his successor. But the government of the day insisted on Ms. Zakari, and throughout the period that she was in charge, the opposition kept protesting that she had issues of conflict of interest. Professor Mahmud Yakubu was later appointed the substantive chair of INEC, but Ms Zakari again became the issue during the Ekiti and Osun Gubernatorial elections. The opposition complained bitterly that those two elections were rigged. They didn’t want the President’s niece as the head of electoral operations and logistics! She was later moved to the Health and Welfare section. Everyone was relieved. Thus, Mrs Zakari role and presence in INEC under the Buhari government has always been controversial, on account of her reported closeness to the President. In Africa, family relationships count a lot.



Bringing her back to the National Collation Centre is clearly insensitive. The politics of proximity remains one of the major stumbling blocks to development and progress in African countries. On the grounds of religion, ethnicity and filial connections, persons compromise ethical considerations and the rule of law in order to serve primordial interests. Under President Buhari, this politics has been foregrounded and stoutly defended to the consternation of even his own supporters, including as we are now aware, through a leaked audio tape, Minister Rotimi Amaechi who managed his campaign in 2015 and is now doing same in 2019. Amaechi may sound treacherous but he seems to be a truth-soldier. The explanation that Mrs Zakari’s job is simply to provide welfare and logistics at the Collation centre is dishonest. Those who speak for government must learn the first rule of the job: they must learn to think before they open their mouths. Too many persons open their mouths these days, to express opinions on public issues and you wonder whether or not they have a brain. The intervention of the Presidency in the controversy is in my considered opinion, unwise.



The electoral body is supposed to be an independent body. Its internal affairs should not be managed by the Presidency. By rushing to disown Mrs Zakari, the Presidency betrayed its own emotions. INEC is also unnecessarily defensive. It has an obligation to be seen to be above board. Amina Zakari’s statements in the face of public outcry conveys an impression of desperation and raises questions. Must she be the commissioner in charge of the Collation Centre? Should we have two Northerners manning the two most strategic departments in the 2019 election? Is this not a further confirmation of extant complaints about nepotism, cronyism and favouritism? Nobody has questioned Ms Zakari’s competence – she is a pharmacist, and I believe she has an NYSC certificate – she is even a Princess of the Caliphate but is she the only person who can collate results? Certainly there must be other ways in which she can be useful, and given the controversy that has emerged, the INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmoud Yakubu should re-assign her without any further delay. It is the only intelligent to do to put an end to the suspicions.



He should do so to protect the integrity of the 2019 electoral process. The doubts that have been raised about Mrs Zakari’s present deployment will not go away. Even if she is subjected to a DNA test and Nigerians are told that she is not related in any way to President Buhari, nobody will believe it. Even if all she does at that collation centre is to attend to the welfare of local and international observers, nobody will agree. INEC has unwittingly created a credibility and integrity problem for itself, more so as this promises to be one of the most keenly contested elections in Nigerian history. It is definitely not an election that can be collated by anyone remotely believed to be close to the incumbent President. There are just too many family connection stories around the chosen collator. And the matter is as follows: One, even the Presidency through Garba Shehu has admitted that there is indeed an inter-marriage relationship between the President and Amina Zakari. Two: her brother – same father, same mother, is said to be the current Minister of Water Resources. Three: when President Buhari was Chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund, she was a consultant to the PTF. Her elder brother, now the Emir of Kazaure was even a legal adviser to Buhari’s PTF, appointed by Buhari himself. These facts alone rob her of her alleged neutrality. It is simple common sense: Ms Zakari’s talents can be put to less controversial use.



And it is important that INEC listens and accommodates the public outcry around and about Ms Amina Zakari. The bigger argument is about the legitimacy of the entire electoral process. If she remains as the head of the national collation centre, the legitimacy of the election would have been destroyed in the event of Buhari achieving his four plus four ambition. INEC will be accused and rightly so, of match-fixing. I have made this point before now, and I repeat it: the international community is watching, no one should be under the illusion that we are an island unto ourselves. President Muhammadu Buhari has been accused before now of cronyism, and a systematic re-Northernisation of Nigeria, such information as his niece or family relation by whatever label, being appointed the country’s collation officer for the 2019 elections worsens the narrative.



I see Ms. Zakari is tempted to defend her integrity, which is natural, since she is being accused of an offence she is yet to commit. But she should be reminded that Nigeria’s 2019 general election is not an academic exercise. It is a big battle for the soul and future of Nigeria. She needs not turn herself into an issue, and INEC does not need the stain, and she doesn’t need the baggage. To ignore public opinion, an important component of the democratic architecture, is counter-productive for all parties concerned. Her position, let another take.

Don't worry. Apc members will only believe this when Abba Kyari and Babagana Kingibe and Isa Funtua or Boss Mustapha says so. They are the presidency and they dish the money in any direction they wish without recourse to you

An apc candidate is doing a road show for his election.

How does that concern saraki

When that news broke, even my wife asked me how Osibanjo could be with strippers. I had to explain to her that it's just bloggers looking for sensational news, that the man attended a public function and many guests were taking selfies with him which included the two ladies properly dressed, that there was no way he could no among the countless people that snapped with him thAt those strip for a living. My wife just shook her head and said, "these bloggers can put one in trouble. This will now make the poor man avoid taking selfies with people in events again"



Ps, this doesn't mean that I won't vote to kick him and his incompetent and senile boss out in February.

And also, if the authorities are serious about combating fake news peddlers, Joe igbokwe will be in jail by now. If they can lock up Lauretta Onochie and joe igbokwe, fake news dissemination would drop by 50%. They should try it and see

Verily verily I say unto thee, not one apc member will make heaven. Nay, not one

Nobody knew she was there in the first place.

In honesty, which of Buhari's ministers will we say will be missed by Nigerians if he or she leaves

I say this without fear or favour, I don't see why I will spend my money to campaign for my own votes within my constituency, hold rallies, do everything to win and at the end I win an elective post (not an appointment) and some one who won his own higher election will think am subjudicated to him. When am not his appointee.

If I ran and won to be a house of reps member, buhari is on his own and am on my own, he won his own and i won my own, am not his appointee, talkless of a governor and then more appalling, his wife.

Those close knows he won't do anything. He is all tough talks and no action

Osibanjo wanted to take it on a lighter note and make a joke out of it but the driver's face shows he's dead serious about his support for Atiku and not ready for any joke, even from buhari's VP

#BURSTED
#AminaZakariLied.

A new twist has been added to the controversy surrounding the appointment of President Muhammadu Buhari’s alleged niece and INEC National Commissioner, Amina Zakari, as chairman of the National Collation Centre Committee, as a non-governmntal organisation on Sunday disclosed that the husband of the INEC official is the All Progressives Congress (APC) senatorial candidate in Bauchi South Senatorial election.

In a press conference in Abuja on Sunday, the NGO, Accord Women and Youth Initiative, therefore demanded the immediate resignation of Zakari due to what it termed as conflict of interest.

“Mrs Amina Zakari who is not only a blood relative of the incumbent, President Mohammed Buhari but also married to the APC senatorial candidate of Bauchi South. Therefore by consanguinity and affinity her hands are tied,” Esther Opaluwah, Executive Director, Accord Women and Youth Initiative, said.

According to the group, the INEC official has failed the neutrality and impartial test, especially on her antecedents in the immediate past elections in the South West where she was in charge of electoral operations and logistics.

This comes as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has alerted the National Peace Committee, the United Nations and all world leaders to immediately call President Buhari to order and ensure peaceful, free, fair and credible general elections in February.

Addressing journalists on Sunday in Abuja, Kola Ologbondiyan, Director, Media & Publicity, PDP Presidential Campaign Organization (PPCO), accused the Presidency of overheating the polity with manipulations of INEC, muzzling of free speech and escalated clampdown on opposition and Civil Society Organizations.

According to him, there is no way peace can be guaranteed without a free and fair election with Zakari as head of the National Collation Centre Committee.

“President Buhari’s insistence on having his relation in charge of collation of Presidential election results is completely provocative, a direct affront to the sensibilities of Nigerians and express invitation to crisis of epic proportion, which is capable of truncating the entire electoral process and derailing our hard-earned democracy.

“The world is aware that majority of Nigerians have rejected Mrs. Amina Zakari. Over 90 percent of the political parties in the election, as well as major political and socio-cultural groups across the country have also called for her resignation from INEC, yet President Buhari is insisting on her stay in the commission.

“Our party is aware of plots by the Buhari Presidency to use Amina Zakari, who has been mentioned as part of those involved in the rigging of 2018 governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun states, to plunge the 2019 general elections into controversies, truncate the flow of results and even render elections in some critical states inconclusive, to pave way for allocation of fictitious votes to President Buhari and the APC.

“We want the National Peace Committee and the entire world to know that as long as Amina Zakari is in INEC, a peaceful election is not guaranteed because she has the mandate to abuse the process and this will not be accepted by Nigerians.

“The PPCO therefore calls on the National Peace Committee to immediately speak out on the impropriety of having Amina Zakari in INEC as well as insist on her removal so that we can have a credible and peaceful Presidential election,” Ologbondiyan said.

The party also alerted the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen of plot to use the police to clamp down on opposition figures on trumped-up criminal charges.

The spiritual crown on Amaechi's head has been removed. Everything about him now is on a free fall. Anybody who knows him now should forget him

buharitill2023:
i say see oyibo, you say see Father,
are we not saying the same thing, that this audio was when ameachi was a governor and abe as ssg.

Son, stop talking. You are further embarrassing yourself.
Sometimes, when I have sat in an interview panel, occasionally people like you come in and in a fell swoop, make the most foolish blunder in a bid to justify a glaring lie. And instead of keeping quiet, they go on a downward trend of wiping out every doubt we had of their level of foolishness.

You have shown enough. Don't go further

This Tolu and the likes of Festus keyamo will still insult Buhari when he leaves office and another principal hires them. They are without value or principles

Officialpdpnig:
Are you not an Atiku zombie? Yet you are calling another a zombie.

Atiku zombie? Atiku doesn't have zombies cos just 3 months ago, he wasn't just one of the PDP aspirants.
If you weren't a zombie (a creature devoid of independent reasoning), tackle the issue or message and leave out insulting the messenger

Sunofgod:
Atiku.......sharap.

Its not everything you must react too.

Typical zombie. Always avoiding the message to attack the person.
Please, is anything wrong with you people's ability to think for yourselves. Are you all under a juju

It will be a task impossible for the Igbos, to follow the Yoruba's Ideology. The Igbos are more republican by nature, which is why it is very difficult for you to tame such tribe.

From the extensive research I did on the three major tribes, I find out that the Igbos are the most westernized, most enterprising, most astute, most dynamic, most intelligent (smart), and the most technically gifted tribe found among the black race. The Hausa/Fulani and the Yorubas have limitations. But an Igbo man doesn't see any limitations. An average Igbo man is highly competitive, unlike the Yoruba and the Hausa/Fulani.

While the Yoruba and the Hausa/Fulani had kingdoms which enabled the British to infiltrate their territories easily, the Igbos on the other hand, had what could be called "Chiefdoms" (autonomous Communities). These structures made it very difficult to tame the Igbos. It took the British just 9 months to tame the North and South West but almost 30 years to be able to tame the Igbos. The British had to send a team of anthropologists to the South to understudy the Igbo because, they (the British) acknowledged they hadn't being up against a black race with such depth and intelligence coupled with the gut to confront the whites and learn from them so, so fast.

While a Tinubu, can have unrestricted influence over the Yoruba tribe, something you can only find mostly among blacks and some poor nations on earth today, an Igbo man can never be tamed by the ideology of one man unchecked, no matter how highly placed he or she is. That's why the Igbos are very successful no matter where they find themselves. They don't believe in putting limitations on their path. You can only find such similarities among the Europeans, the Americans, and developed Asian tiger nations.

A Hausa/Fulani man sees Kano as his world. A Yoruba man sees Lagos as his world. An Igbo man sees the world as his Village!

There is something wrong and vain with the black man. Emenike has never earned anything near what the likes of Lampard, Terry, Gerald earned but yet you won't see them wasting money like this. When he has lavished his on ostentatious lifestyle, he will start running to TB Joshua to save him

Any news to ridicule the PDP campaign or present them as villains makes naira land front page.

Anyway, we prefer chop I chop than APC cabal chop everything alone, we die of hunger

Mrs. Amina Zakari just said to the BBC, “I’m not [Buhari’s] niece.” That’s flat-out mendacious. And it puts a huge question mark on her honesty, probity, and trustworthiness. A person who can lie this casually about something as basic and as verifiable as her relationships is disreputable and unworthy of the responsibility she's been entrusted with at INEC. So what is the truth?

In a December 27, 2018 article, Mohammed Haruna, former Daily Trust columnist and current INEC commissioner, confirmed that President Muhammadu Buhari’s biological sister was once married to Mrs. Amina Zakari’s father. That makes Amina Buhari’s niece. This is the definition of a niece in the Oxford English Dictionary: “A daughter of one's brother or sister, or of one's brother-in-law or sister-in-law.” Amina’s father was Buhari’s brother-in-law. So Amina IS INDEED Buhari’s niece.

But that’s not all. At some point in his youth, Buhari, who lost his father at a young age, came under the guardianship of Amina’s father, the late Alhaji Hussaini Adamu, who was emir of Kazaure, Daura's "next-door neighbor." I had the pleasure of interviewing Mrs. Amina Zakari’s brother, Alhaji Najib Hussaini Adamu, in early 1999 shortly after he became emir, when I was a reporter for the Weekly Trust. I stayed at the palace for days. So I have some familiarity with the family.

Buhari has never severed his relationship with Amina’s father’s family even after Buhari’s sister's death. When he was chairman of PTF, he got Amina a consultancy contract with Afri-Projects Consortium (APC), “the sole manager of the PTF projects.” In Ray Ekpu’s widely shared June 2018 article titled “Petroleum Trust Fraud,” we learn that the late Salihijo Ahmad, the Adamawa-born boss of APC, “admitted to Newswatch in an interview published by the magazine in its April 19, 1999 issue that it was APC that wrote the proposal which defined the mandate of the PTF.”

It has also been established by several people I spoke with today that Amina Zakari was nominated to INEC commissionership by Buhari. This fact, as I pointed out in my Saturday Tribune column, isn’t enough to vitiate her neutrality. After all, Jonathan defeated Buhari in 2011 while she was INEC commissioner. But deceiving the world by concealing the nature and depth of her relationship with Buhari shows that she’s up to no good this time around.

Another evidence of Buhari’s continuing relationship with Amina’s family exists in the fact that Mrs. Amina Zakari’s biological brother, Alhaji Sulaiman Adamu, is Buhari’s Minister of Water Resources. In both African and Western kinship dynamics, Buhari and Amina Zakari are related. If Nigeria were a functioning country, Amina would have recused herself from her current role at INEC in view of the widespread concerns raised by several stakeholders about her ties with Buhari. But Nigeria is an anything-goes banana republic.

Postscript:
Also note that Amina's brother, that is, the current emir of Kazaure, whom I interviewed and interacted with in 1999, was executive secretary of PTF. Buhari gave him the job. Ambassador Kazaure, Buhari's Chief of Protocol, is also a relative of Amina's. Finally, as most people know by now, Amina's mother is from Daura, Buhari's hometown. So her ties with Buhari are pretty strong.

Eledan:
If you think NL Is giving you’ heartache, go and promote PDP in Biafranworld dot com and Linda Ikeji blog.
You don need to die of heart attack on NL

So it's tribal now?
And why do you kids from poor homes always making everything into tribal war? Igbos are not the reason your parents are poor. Your parents would have still been poor with or without igbos.