₦airaland Forum

Xantel:
I want to know

Ficient:
I'm a federal civil servant, wife just got a job in the UK as a nurse. This has been our plan, although she initiated the idea which I supported especially bcuz of our kids. As the time is getting closer I'm developing some cold feet, but eventually I'm sure I will move. Don't really know if leaving my civil service job and farming business is a good idea, I don't really have an Abroad game plan yet.

Hashabiah:
Baba na muslims be this o. Repraisal attacks to happen in the coming weeks . Make Christians for that place dey careful ...especially during Christmas and New Year

The Imo state governor, Hope Uzodimma, on Saturday said 18 suspects arrested by security agencies have given dependable evidence on the names of sponsors of insecurity in Imo state, adding that their names will be reeled out on 3 January 2022.

The governor disclosed this in Owerri while addressing elected officials of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the state.

According to Uzodimma, the names of the sponsors will be made known during his Imo stakeholders meeting in January.

According to the governor, “APC is the Party in power in Imo State and remains the Party to beat and as such, his government will not shy away from supporting the Party that created the government. We will grow the Party. The Party will be involved in my government. We will support the Party that created the government.

“Elected APC officials should consider it a rare privilege that they were elected by their people to serve them, hence they owe God a lot of gratitude. The opposition has been plotting so much evil against APC members and their leaders and encouraged the Party faithful to be at alert.

“My government will do all within its powers to ensure that Imo State is safe and that anyone working to destabilise the system or encouraging criminality, no matter how highly placed, would be made to face the full wrath of the law.”

“Let me say these two councillors were recently killed and that those who killed them have been arrested and they have owned up to the crime. 18 persons are now in custody in connection with different dimensions of crimes against the people and that they have also given dependable evidence about their sponsors who, he said, he will make known at Imo State stakeholders by January 3, 2022.

“Don’t be intimidated. So long as I remain Governor in this state, they will face the law. We have evidence of those who are behind the insecurity based on information from the suspects. By January 3, 2022, when I will hold Imo stakeholders meeting I will reel out their names one after the other with the evidence of their role.”

Gunmen suspected to be kidnappers have abducted a Department of State Services operative during an attack on residents in Abaji, Abaji Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, on Saturday.

The hoodlums also reportedly killed a vigilante member during the incident which occurred overnight.

The armed men were said to have invaded the community in their numbers and attacked a DSS outpost in the area.

During the exchange of gunshots with the DSS operatives, the gunmen successfully kidnapped a DSS operative.

Our correspondent could not confirm if the gang had demanded a ransom for the abducted officer.

The FCT police spokesperson, Josephine Adeh, said she did not have information on the incident and referred inquiries to the DSS.

But the spokesman to the secret police, Peter Afunanya, had yet to respond to inquiries as of the time of filing this report.

Our correspondent reports that Abaji has become notorious for criminal activities, including abductions of residents and travellers on the Abuja-Lokoja highway.

AS president in 2011, Goodluck Jonathan did all he could to ensure South West grabbed the country’s number four seat, including lobbying then opposition leaders from the zone, to no avail. The North West eventually grabbed the seat, supported by South West leaders in opposition to then ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). 

Former Governor of Osun State and now statesman, Chief Bisi Akande, made this revelation in his autobiography, “My Participations” which is currently dominating political and national dis- course. 

Aminu Tambuwal, now Sokoto State governor, won the seat, against the preferred pick of his party, Mrs Mulikat Adeola Akande, from the South-West. Defunct Action Congress of Nigeria, then a fledging opposition, which had Akande and his soulmate, former Lagos State governor, Senator Bola Tinubu, as front- line leaders, openly asked its elected members of the House of Representatives, mostly from the South-West, to work against their region and back Tambuwal from North-West. 

The opposition party’s support carried Tambuwal through the contest against Akande, then ruling party’s favourite for the speakership seat.

In his book, Chief Akande revealed that former president then as incumbent, personally reached out to Tinubu, who is now believed to be nursing presidential aspiration in 2023 and himself, but couldn’t convince them. 

He wrote, “President Jonathan, immediately after the meeting (with political parties), called Bola Tinubu aside into a lobby to broach the matter of ACN support for a choice of who would become the Speaker of the House of Representatives. 

“That same day, President Jonathan talked to me on phone about the same matter. He disclosed that PDP had zoned the position to the South-West but that only one Muraina and another Mulika won elections on PDP ticket from the zone into the House of Representatives. 

“I quickly reminded him that, as at (sic) that date in the United States of America, while the Democrats produced the Senate President, the Republicans (the opposition) produced the Speaker of the House of Representatives. I boasted that ACN was capable of suggesting to him ten names of members from the South West from among whom to choose if PDP would be magnanimous enough to practice democracy the way it was being practised in the USA, from where we imported our presidential system. 

“He seemed pissed off and stopped the conversation,” he said.

In the era being referenced by the former national chairman of the defunct opposition party, the controlling party in each of the chambers of the Congress in the United States was in the majority, which wasn’t the case with ACN when the Ila-born politician was making his claim.

He also revealed in the book that their political platforms had their sight on working against the then ruling party. 

“In the aftermath of the 2011 elections, many of our people were dissatisfied. Under the PDP, our country has become thoroughly decadent. Those of us who saw the then ruling party as an extension of the military corrupt politics preferred to work with all the major opposition parties which would eventually lead to a merger if we were to uproot the entrenched PDP and its evil tendencies. The first party that came to mind was the CPC which like us, was resolutely opposed to the PDP. 

“Immediately after the elections, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila led a team of ACN boys to Bola Tinubu and me to suggest support for Hon. Aminu Tambuwal, a PDP member from Sokoto, to become the Speaker of the House of Representatives. 

In the meantime, President Goodluck Jonathan was pressing for a government of national unity, with a bid of sucking ACN into manipulative extinction.” 

Another major revelation from the book is the involvement of a former National Security Adviser and a Sokoto prince, Colonel Sambo Dasuki (rtd) in the presidential project of now President Muhammadu Buhari preparatory to the 2011 presidential election against then incumbent Jonathan. 

Jonathan defeated Buhari in the contest, before Buhari triumphed in their replay in 2015. 

Interestingly, Dasuki would go on to become Jonathan’s most senior security adviser, but also ended up spending 1,484 days in detention, while being prosecuted by the Buhari administration, for alleged corruption while serving in the Jonathan administration. 

He was eventually released on December 24, 2019, after many court orders for his released had been spurned by the administration. He was accused of siphoning fund meant for arms to fight insurgency in the North-East. 

The author, however, paid the embattled former security chief compliments for his role in facilitating a merger between ACN and CPC in the build-up to the 2011 poll, to defeat Jonathan. 

He said, “The reaction of CPC to this letter (to CPC from ACN and published on the same page), began the failed negotiation between ACN and CPC which attracted further intervention by some national leaders like General Babangida, Atiku Abubakar and others. 

“This eventually crashed at the threshold of the 2011 presidential elections which President Jonathan of the PDP won again. 

“The efforts of the former National Security Adviser– Colonel Sambo Dasuki is worth mentioning in this political bridge-building attempt between ACN and CPC. Dasuki was then in support of Buhari becoming the presidential candidate of the alliance. 

“Sambo Dasuki was coming around, begging us, to support Buhari’s presidential aspiration. Nuhu Ribadu, whom we had earlier chosen as our presidential candidate in the ACN, said he was ready to step down for Buhari. He said when he accepted to run, he did not know that Buhari was also interested in running.”

fergie001:
It's not true.....I know what I am saying, they wouldn't do that to any nairalander.

fergie001:
I endorse the return of the bill to the National Assembly.

....insisting that parties’ supremacy and rights to opt for direct or indirect primaries must not be tampered with.

(This is where I have always based my arguments)

Bluntcrazeman, seunmsg

Few days after Daily Sun exclusively reported that Muhammadu Buhari may reject the Electoral Amendment Bill over the removal of indirect primaries from the document, the president has returned it to the National Assembly.

He said the president met with INEC chairman, Professor Yakubu Mahmoud, who briefed him on the dangers the law would pose to the conduct of elections in the coming months.

President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, are expected to read the content of the president’s letter next week, when the two chambers reconvene.

Speaking on the dangers the law would pose, Uzodimma claimed the proposed amendment does not tally with the provisions of the 1999 constitution, insisting that parties’ supremacy and rights to opt for direct or indirect primaries must not be tampered with.

He said laws that cannot be implemented should not be passed, arguing that it was insensitive to do so.

For over two weeks, governors elected on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have been mounting pressure on President Buhari not to sign the Electoral Amendment Bill into law until contentious areas are resolved.

Many of the governors, who are at loggerheads with senators and members of the House of Representatives from their various states, had insisted that the National Assembly must yank off indirect primaries from the Electoral Act.

Two weeks ago, APC governors, represented by the caretaker committee chairman of the party and Governor of Yobe State, Mala Buni, met with President Buhari. Others present during at the meeting were Governors Atiku Bagudu of Kebbi and Abubakar Badaru of Jigawa states respectively.

Though the governors did not speak on the ongoing controversy trailing the removal of indirect primaries from the Electoral Act by members of the National Assembly, sources in the APC told Daily Sun that the issue featured prominently during the meeting.

The source said the three APC governors, who represented their colleagues, urged the president to return the Amendment Bill to the National Assembly to reflect some of the concerns raised by stakeholders.

This is even as Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State frowned on the “infringement” of parties’ rights by the National Assembly.

Uzodimma, in an exclusive interview with Daily Sun, said the removal of indirect primaries from the proposed amendment would render political parties powerless, especially those with low funds to finance direct primaries.

A senator who spoke with Daily Sun, revealed that the Bill was returned to the Senate and the House of Representatives in a letter addressed to the two principal officers.

The source said the president cited high cost of conducting direct primaries by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which according to him, hovers around N500 billion.


He said the president met with INEC chairman, Professor Yakubu Mahmoud, who briefed him on the dangers the law would pose to the conduct of elections in the coming months.

President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, are expected to read the content of the president’s letter next week, when the two chambers reconvene.

Speaking on the dangers the law would pose, Uzodimma claimed the proposed amendment does not tally with the provisions of the 1999 constitution, insisting that parties’ supremacy and rights to opt for direct or indirect primaries must not be tampered with.

He said laws that cannot be implemented should not be passed, arguing that it was insensitive to do so.

For over two weeks, governors elected on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have been mounting pressure on President Buhari not to sign the Electoral Amendment Bill into law until contentious areas are resolved.

Many of the governors, who are at loggerheads with senators and members of the House of Representatives from their various states, had insisted that the National Assembly must yank off indirect primaries from the Electoral Act.

Two weeks ago, APC governors, represented by the caretaker committee chairman of the party and Governor of Yobe State, Mala Buni, met with President Buhari. Others present during at the meeting were Governors Atiku Bagudu of Kebbi and Abubakar Badaru of Jigawa states respectively.

Though the governors did not speak on the ongoing controversy trailing the removal of indirect primaries from the Electoral Act by members of the National Assembly, sources in the APC told Daily Sun that the issue featured prominently during the meeting.

The source said the three APC governors, who represented their colleagues, urged the president to return the Amendment Bill to the National Assembly to reflect some of the concerns raised by stakeholders.

The source said National Assembly leaders, who until now refused to listen to concerns raised by governors may lose out in the ongoing power play.

It said many APC lawmakers were already aggrieved that governors have hijacked the structures of the party ahead of the 2023 general elections.

It said lawmakers believe that direct primaries would raise their chances of returning to the Assembly in 2023 if allowed to scale through.

Similarly, President of the Senate, Lawan two weeks ago, met with President Buhari on the same Electoral Amendment Bill. While briefing newsmen, he frowned at politicians lobbying the president not to sign the Bill into law.

Unlike Lawan who kept mum on the issue of indirect primaries yanked off from the Bill, Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila, last week, during a visit to the president explained why the exclusion of indirect primaries was good for the country’s democracy.

A source said the Speaker, who is the arrowhead behind the removal of indirect primaries from the 2010 Electoral Amendment Act, is also under fire from his South West leaders for taking a decision without due consultations.

Unlike the divided APC leadership on the issue, the PDP is united in its call to have the decision rescinded or the entire amendment discarded by President Buhari.

Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide has maintained that Igbos will not kneel before the Northerners or any group for the 2023 Presidency.

According to the Igbo Cultural group, it is the North that is supposed to be on its knees begging for an Igbo for President in 2023, considering its failure to resuscitate itself since 2015.

Ohanaeze stated this in a statement signed by its Secretary-General Okechukwu Isiguzoro on Wednesday.

Isiguzoro further reiterated that 2023 will be peaceful and all political ailments and security maladies will be healed in Nigeria only if an Igbo man will be allowed to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari.

According to Isiguzoro, any imposition, manipulation, or ethnic dominance against the South especially the old Eastern Nigeria may spell doom for the country and will fuel chaos and disintegration of the country.

“We watched keenly as juveniles of darkness and elders of marauders take on Revered Igbo Elder statesman Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife over his standpoint on 2023, IGBO will never kneel for anyone to be President in 2023, we will explore all options available before us, as there are ongoing backstage engagements and negotiations on the way with all sections of the country especially with the real owners of the North.

“Our suspicions were reinforced by the way Northern groups especially ACF (Arewa Consultative Forum) and NEF (Northern Elders Forum) are agitated whenever issues arise that will favour the Igbo.

“We are aware of the ugly patterns adopted by ACF and NEF to discredit, undermine and thwart benefits or schemes that will favour the East. We have traditional allies in the North, but we will trace the roots of the matter. Why does northern leadership resort to blackmail, confrontation with crooked offensive onslaughts against the Southeast irrespective of the level of development and investment Igbo have brought to the north? 

“Whatever it takes, Igbo will not kneel before any group. Rather it is the North that should be on their knees begging for an Igbo President in 2023. After all, the North has failed to resuscitate itself from the self-inflicted wounds of insecurity that they imported for political purposes in 2015.

“No northern President in 2023 can save the north, rather it’s a deceptive old order of a few northern elites to squander Nigeria’s resources to the detriment of Nigerians.

“Kneeling is a Northern cultural way of life and forbidden to Eastern Nigeria. The only way we can continue to work as one Nigeria is for the North to champion an Igbo presidency for 2023. “There’s no other tribe that will rebuild the North except Igbo, there is no other tribe with a huge population, investments and had contributed in the past for the progress and development of the North except the Igbo.

“With this evidence and facts about Igbo being partners in progress and traditional allies to the North, there is nothing to lose or fear for the North to discard the rise of Biafra agitators who are reacting to the nepotism and security threats to the east. These will fizzle out immediately an Igbo succeed Buhari in 2023.”