The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has three administrative building complexes in the capital Abuja. Everybody working there is very busy. 84 million Nigerians are called upon to elect a new president and parliament on February 16. State parliaments and gubernatorial elections will take place two weeks later. Sitting in his office in the capital, INEC’s deputy spokesperson Aliyu M. Bello is happy with the way things are going. “The commission is ready. It has been engaging with critical stakeholders and prepared the voters’ list. So far arrangements for everything pertaining to the 2019 election are excellent,” Bello told DW.

Preparations for the elections are an enormous logistical challenge. The number of registered voters is the highest ever. 774 districts will host almost 120,000 polling stations. All of them will have to be provided with material and personnel in time for election day. Jude Udo Ilo has serious doubts about the feasibility of this. “There are reasons to worry. For instance, one month before the election, the recruitment and training of the staff have not yet been completed,” the director of the regional chapter of the Open Society Initiative financed by the US billionaire George Soros, said. It is far from certain that the material will be shipped to the country in time to be thoroughly scrutinized for errors. “We are not very clear on how INEC is approaching all of that activity.”

More: https://www.naijiant.com/guestcolumn/nigeria-the-challenges-of-registering-to-vote/

President Muhammadu Buhari’s two completely inept performances on television in the space of a month have left his handlers and spin-doctors scrambling for excuses with the presidential (s)election less than a month away.

Buhari is seeking a second term and his incoherence, inability to answer simple questions and general cluelessness about what is going on around him have been laid to bare in those two television appearances. Many Nigerians are questioning his fitness for the job and it has forced the likes of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, a lawyer by trade, to mount a defence that seems like an exercise in futility, considering the evidence before the eyes of many Nigerian viewers.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/articles/osinbajos-lame-defence-of-buharis-uselessness/

As February’s presidential (s)election approaches, President Muhammadu Buhari is being wheeled out to talk to Nigerians – something he has tried to avoid over the past three years and more. He hardly ever held press conferences, hardly ever spoke to the Nigerian media. Now with an election approaching, his handlers know that he can’t be seen to be asking people to vote for him without talking to them.

But each time they try to get their boss to speak to the public/media, despite ensuring it is in a controlled environment, Buhari ends up showing why he is clearly unfit for office, physically and mentally.

The so-called town hall encounter on NTA on Wednesday turned out predictably and was even worse than the president’s outing on Arise News earlier this month.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/videos/buhari-is-done-nigerians-should-put-him-out-of-his-misery-next-month/

Jimi Agbaje, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate for the governorship of Lagos State, said during a debate with other candidates last night: “Our people, who are indigenes of the state, must appreciate that it is the contributions of other people who come to Lagos that make it tick. Lagos is a cosmopolitan city, where everyone should have a space, but, that does not detract from the fact that indigenes of the state would be relegated.

“I will ensure an affirmative plan of action or policy is put in place to ensure, at least, 25 percent of opportunities coming from the state are reserved for the indigenes.”

It is shocking that a candidate from a major party for the governorship of Nigeria’s most important state, in terms of contributions to the economy and the most cosmopolitan state in the country, would either be so brazen in proposing illegality or be actually ignorant of the fact that what he is proposing is unlawful.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/articles/warning-to-jimi-agbaje-your-affirmative-action-proposal-is-illegal/

This is the man Buhari wants to be Igbo president.

Many Nigerian observers are not aware of the Igbo man who is the closest politically to President Muhammadu Buhari, who does not have that much support in the Igbo heartland of Nigeria’s southeast region.

Buhari once dismissed Igbos as people that only gave him 5% of the vote and it appears that he will struggle to beat that low figure in the presidential (s)election next month. Buhari has been trying to improve on his share of the vote in the southeast with the help of his closest Igbo ally, Emeka Nwajiuba, a former lawmaker who represented Ehime Mbano, Ihitte-Uboma and Obowo Federal Constituency in Imo State in the National Assembly.

Nwajiuba, was previously with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) before quitting for the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) – Buhari’s party before it merged with other parties to become the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2014. The president rewarded Nwajiuba’s loyalty by appointing him Chairman of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) in April 2017.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/beer-parlour-gist/buharis-closest-igbo-ally-struggling-to-sell-the-president-in-the-southeast/

The Boko Haram ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) faction known as ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province) has stuck with its strategy of concentrating on the security forces and doing so by assembling a large enough number of gunmen to ensure, most of the time, a quick victory. The continued prevalence of corruption and incompetent officers in the army has contributed to continued chaos and lawlessness in northern Borno State, where most of the population was displaced by Boko Haram violence in 2014-15 and when Boko Haram control was broken by 2017. After that government programs to revive the economy and restore law and order collapsed under the usual corruption and incompetence of local officials and security forces. Even a reform minded president who was a former general and Moslem was unable to push military reforms far enough and fast enough. Boko Haram is not winning, the government is failing to finish off a defeated Boko Haram and take advantage of an opportunity to regain the trust and loyalty of the local population. ISIL took advantage of similar conditions to quickly overrun more than a third of Iraq in 2014. Many Nigerian leaders are well aware of how that worked but the corruption is so entrenched and widespread that reform moves slowly and that left the army and government officials vulnerable to a well-organized Boko Haram comeback.

ISWAP is also known as the Barnawi (or “Albarnawi”) faction of Boko Haram. ISWAP has apparently received a lot of useful technical and tactical advice from ISIL veterans of fighting in Iraq, Syria and Libya. Boko Haram persists in the northeast in large part because of its willingness to experiment, innovate and take advice from foreign ISIL veterans. The Barnawi faction follows the current ISIL doctrine of concentrating attacks on security forces and government officials (preferably the corrupt ones). That makes it easier to extort (raise taxes) cash and other goods from the local population. The Barnawi faction has over 3,000 active gunmen and operates mainly in the far north of Borno state near Lake Chad and the borders of Niger and Chad. The smaller Shekau faction has about half as many armed men and operates further south near the Borno State capital of Maiduguri and the Sambisa Forest. Both factions rely on the fact that the years of Boko Haram violence in Borno State (where Boko Haram originated in 2004) has increased the poverty and corruption the Islamic terrorist organization was founded to eliminate. While many potential recruits are discouraged by stricter standards and more fanatic approach of ISIL (compared to the original Boko Haram) faction the most hard core Islamic radicals are drawn to the more extreme groups and that way Boko Haram persists.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/guestcolumn/nigeria-seizing-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory/

The same Basketmouth Obi that said education in Anambra State was not for the poor. https://www.naijiant.com/articles/peter-obi-education-in-anambra-state-is-not-meant-for-the-poor/

ayampissed:


brace up, four down, four more to go.

make sure you have your pills in your pocket all the time.

You are the one that would need the pills to cope with 4 more years of suffering and smiling.

Unless we are talking about president of Daura Town Union.

Many Nigerian politicians specialise in running their mouths, but can’t run much else. President Muhammadu Buhari showed in his so-called interview with This Day newspaper that he can’t talk like a leader, can’t lead the country, and can’t even be trusted with something as mundane as running a bath, let alone running a large country like Nigeria.

Any Nigerian that watches his shambolic, stage-managed and disgraceful showing, with an indulgent bunch of journalists, and thinks Buhari is suitable for the highest office in the land, either deserves to have their head checked or is in the payroll of the administration.

Buhari generally refuses to talk to the Nigerian media. But he wants to be reelected in February. So he opted for what Fela Kuti would have called an “army arrangement”. This must be the first time in the history of television that a presenter (Charles Aniagolu) had to introduce an interview with a disclaimer – the president declined to be interviewed live, the presidency recorded the interview (no surprises then to witness the poor sound and vision quality) and they set the rules of engagement. Despite their efforts, they couldn’t save Buhari from embarrassing himself.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/videos/buhari-shows-he-cant-be-trusted-to-run-a-bath/

"The spike in violence again has meant that while Buhari ran on bringing peace and stability back to Nigeria, he hasn't succeeded," said Sophia Moestrup, deputy director for Central and West Africa at the National Democratic Institute (NDI).

The Buhari government is barely interested in young people's concerns, she told DW. Two out of three Nigerians are youths, and a lack of education and prospects along with high unemployment can push them right into the arms of terrorist organizations like Boko Haram, she said.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/guestcolumn/nigerians-fear-violence-will-play-a-part-in-februarys-selections/

The death of Second Republic president Shehu Shagari on Friday, has kicked off quite a bit of historic revisionism from some quarters. Shagari was president from 1979 until his government was overthrown in a military coup on 31 December 1983 that installed Muhammadu Buhari as head of the ruling junta.

Some have argued that Nigeria could have made significant strides if not for this misguided military intervention. Well, no one knows how things would have panned out if the military did not step in. But this doesn’t mean that we don’t know how the Shagari regime performed, or failed to perform. One of Shagari’s most strident critics in those days, Abubakar Rimi, said that the then president thought politics was just about wearing long caps. It was Rimi’s way of highlighting that Shagari was a case study in cluelessness.

The book “Nigeria: A new history of a turbulent century” by Richard Bourne should help those with short memories remember what Shagari’s rule meant for Nigeria.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/articles/a-brief-look-at-shehu-shagaris-presidency/

Ben Murray-Bruce, officially the senator for Bayelsa East, but unofficially the “Senator representing Twitter”, also has other more disparaging nicknames including “Ben Murray Dunce” and “Senator Alabi Yellow”. But Bruce prefers to be known as “the Common Sense Senator”, announcing via his Twitter handle that he is a “Common Sense Advocate” and that he is the author of the book: “A Commonsense Revolution”.

But despite these efforts to forcefully associate himself with common sense, Bruce regularly struggles to make any sense at all.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/articles/ben-murray-bruce-so-bereft-of-common-sense/

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Jonathan's grandfather is an Igbo man from Arochukwu that settled in Otuoke.

Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State, who completes his second term next year, was taunted by Adams Oshiomhole, the chairman of Okorocha’s party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) at a rally yesterday for the APC governorship candidate Hope Uzodinma.

Okorocha has become ostracised from his own party following his failure in installing his son-in-law, Uche Nwosu, as the APC candidate for governor. This failure has resulted in Nwosu defecting to the Action Alliance (AA) and now contesting on that platform.

Okorocha has found himself in the strange position of running for senate under the APC, while supporting Nwosu’s AA bid with state funds. An APC source has informed Naijiant.com that Bola Tinubu, the former governor of Lagos State, is behind the Imo State governor’s troubles. Tinubu wanted to “make sure Okorocha is rendered politically irrelevant” for 2023.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/beer-parlour-gist/tinubu-is-behind-okorochas-troubles-apc-source/

The resurgence of attacks by Boko Haram in parts of northeastern Nigeria has raised concerns that the jihadist group is far from being vanquished. Security experts are now urging a change in counter-insurgency measures.

At the start of this week, one Nigerian soldier was killed and another one injured following an attack by Boko Haram jihadists at a military base in Borno State, northeastern Nigeria. According to a source who did not wish to be identified, the heavily armed insurgents briefly took control of Mairari village, located 10 kilometers (six miles) from Monguno town, where Nigeria's military has a garrison. The village was recaptured after Nigerian forces deployed reinforcements.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/guestcolumn/experts-say-nigeria-must-change-its-strategy-to-defeat-boko-haram/

Larryfest:
Our President is working we just can't see it

Your mumu never do.

The House of Lords in the UK held a debate titled “Nigeria: Intercommunal violence” on Tuesday. During the debate, Liberal Democrat Lord Chidgey said: “… following Amnesty International’s report yesterday which confirmed that more than half of the 3,600-plus deaths over the past three years of the conflict in Nigeria have occurred this year, what discussions are the Government planning with their Nigerian counterparts about the failure of their security forces? I note the Minister’s comments about the 30,000 who are being trained. Will he also comment on the negative impact that the corruption among senior officers is having on the welfare and security of their troops? Does he agree that it contributed to the recent massacre at Metele, which was not helped by the ineffectiveness in these matters of the ex-general, President Muhammadu Buhari? “

More: https://www.naijiant.com/articles/british-peer-accuses-buhari-of-ineffectiveness-in-dealing-with-fulani-herdsmen-violence/

The lack of electricity is pervasive in rural Nigeria, where 90 million people live entirely off the grid.  Zaharaddeen Umar, from the German public service broadcaster, DW, asked people in one village in far northern Katsina State how they get by in the dark.  Nigeria's president Muhammadu Buhari comes from Daura in Katsina State.

The village of Unguwar Dogo, comprised of some 2,000 households, has never been connected to the electricity grid. Jamilu Sanusi, a 34-year-old resident, says the villagers are in dire need of electricity.

"We have to travel to another village to charge our mobile phones. It usually takes 40 minutes to reach the place. But if there was electricity here, we could charge the phones from the comfort of our homes," says Sanusi.

The people of Unguwar Dogo depend largely on subsistence farming, but during dry spells the young among them have to move to urban areas to make a living. Youth leader Adamu Haruna says the absence of electricity is fueling the exodus.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/guestcolumn/living-without-electricity-in-buharis-home-state/

Nigerian journalists should watch Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan and always do so with pen and paper ready for note-taking. Hasan was at his best again on the Upfront programme titled: “Who will be Nigeria’s next president?”, and trying to hold Nigerian politicians to account – something Nigerian chequebook journalists consistently fail to do.

This time, Hasan had within his crosshairs Festus Keyamo, the spokesman for President Muhammadu Buhari, who is seeking reelection, and Buhari’s main challenger Atiku Abubakar’s spokesman Segun Sowunmi. Hasan spared neither man from scrutiny.

More & video: https://www.naijiant.com/videos/al-jazeeras-mehdi-hasan-asks-the-questions-nigerian-journalists-fail-to-ask/

Five candidates for the Number Two position in Nigeria lined up this evening on national TV for a debate.  The word "debate" is used very loosely here.  There was a lot of talk, but precious little substance.

The candidates were incumbent vice president Yemi Osinbajo of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Peter Obi of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Umma Getso of the Young Progressives Party (YPP),  Ganiyu Galadima of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN) and Khadija Abdullahi-Iya of the Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN).  Only the first two have a chance of becoming the next vice president of Nigeria and the other three looked completely out of their depth.

It is still not clear whether President Muhammadu Buhari will participate in the presidential debate, but these things don't matter that much to Nigerians.  And the organisers of the debate seemed to demonstrate how the charade was detached from the reality of the people the candidates claim they want to serve by the debate being hosted at the five-star Abuja Transcorp Hilton.  The majority of Nigerians would not even dare get into the car park at the hotel, let alone stay in one of their rooms where prices range from £190 - £468 a night.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/videos/nigerias-vice-presidential-debate-shows-why-selections-are-a-waste-of-time/

Nigerian authorities have failed to ensure justice for the killings of hundreds of members of the Shia Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) since 2015, Human Rights Watch said today in releasing a video of security forces’ violent crackdowns against members of the IMN.

On December 12, 2015, the Nigeria army used disproportionate force against the group’s street procession in Zaria, Kaduna State in northwest Nigeria to clear a route for the army chief’s convoy. In an ensuing three-day violent crackdown, the army killed 347 members of the group and arrested hundreds more, including the group’s leader, Sheikh Ibrahim El Zakzaky, and his wife, Ibraheemat.

Representatives of the group allege that subsequent crackdowns on the group’s activities and protests in Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Yobe, Plateau, Sokoto, and Abuja, the federal capital, have resulted in the death of at least 110 people.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/videos/nigeria-end-impunity-for-killings-of-shia/

Abuja, Nigeria's once-gleaming and supposedly modern capital, mainly built in the 1990s, seems to be a shadow of its former self.  Yours truly spent the last weekend there and tried to gauge the national mood with the 2019 presidential (s)election less than three months away.

On the drive to Gwarimpa from the airport, my host was already complaining about how bad things are.  The guy works in a bank and is relatively well off, but he said he knew many people who have moved abroad or are trying to make that move.  This he put down to the mismanagement of President Muhammadu Buhari's administration.  You wouldn't know how bad things are from the road from the airport, with posters and billboards of Buhari and his vice president Yemi Osinbajo, asking voters for four more years.  Throughout my stay, I didn't see a single poster for any of the opposition.  You would have thought Buhari was the only candidate for president.  Maybe he had set up a "task force" to remove all opposition posters.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/articles/abuja-vibes-dont-feel-good-for-buhari/

crunchyg:
This was before the Cabal decided to use him to replace Buhari

That's FCT Minister Mohammed Bello.

Kanu is a cokehead. https://www.naijiant.com/videos/is-this-why-nnamdi-kanu-and-femi-fani-kayode-got-on-like-a-house-on-fire/

Buhari reportedly only spends an hour in the office and doesn't read any papers. More here:

https://www.naijiant.com/beer-parlour-gist/buhari-is-the-laziest-nigerian-president-ever/

Oby Ezekwesili, who is meant to be running for president with the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN), which might as well be called the "No Hope Party of Nigeria", spoke at Chatham House in London on Monday.

This correspondent thought long and hard about going, as this was an opportunity to ensure she was asked some serious questions.  But the event clashed with a couple of meetings and in over 10 years of listening to Ezekwesili, it's hard to remember when she ever made any sense - despite the over-bloated sense of self-worth and shameless self-promotion.  So I decided to give the event a miss and a video of the proceedings showed it was a wise move.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/articles/oby-ezekwesili-takes-talking-loud-and-saying-nothing-to-chatham-house/

I have thus far refrained from talking about Jubril al-Sudani, because it is bunkum. And I was quite glad that President Muhammadu Buhari had also ignored it, or, appeared to have. Until yesterday.

Now he has spoken, and the cat has been set amongst the pigeons, as it were. There are three threads to this story:

1 — Jubril al-Sudani is the creation of a delusional and likely insane Nnamdi Kanu. Unfortunately, the story was given strength by the information gap that Buhari’s long absences generated when he went for his meds. If his media team had been honest with Nigerians about what is wrong with our president, we won’t have had to deal with this. Lesson — when there is an information gap, people will fill it with something.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/guestcolumn/jubril-al-sudani-the-buhari-joke-that-has-gone-too-far/

kid23:
Once your brain is programmed well to ask questions on the already given evidences then comes d DNA test.


You need to feed a black man with truth slowly because if you tell him everything once he will mistake as lie or forget it easily.


It will surely come but it is a gradual process

Kanu said last week that he will present DNA evidence during his broadcast yesterday. He did not. He did not do what he promised to do. He did not even mention DNA yesterday.

Last week Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the separatist group, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), promised to "unmask with DNA evidence" the "impostor Jubril from Sudan" who has allegedly been used by the "Fulani cabal" to replace President Muhammadu Buhari.  Buhari, as the Kanu tall tales go, died in January last year and rather than let the vice president take over as the law says, the cabal brought in a body double from Sudan.

In his broadcast on the internet-based Radio Biafra last week, Kanu, who recently turned up in Israel after missing, following a military raid of his compound in September last year, claimed that it was clear that the person posing as Nigeria's president is not Buhari.  Very little of Kanu's claims stacked up.  But he said he had DNA evidence and was going to present it in yesterday's broadcast.

However, there wasn't even a mention of DNA, just a recycling of the same old questionable claims, empty boasts and the occasional truth about Nigeria.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/articles/nnamdi-kanu-where-is-the-dna-evidence/

Buhari's failures

"It is a mistake to allow the military to run the counter terrorism strategy alone. Civil security agencies have not been playing any role," Adamu says. For instance, there are communities without policemen, where only the military, known for its heavy-handedness, and repeatedly accused of violence against civilians, look after security.

The problem is compounded by a demoralized army. "They are killing us every day. A soldier will be at the war front – no helmet, no flak jacket, not enough ammunition. We are fighting to defend our country and the generals are cheating us," a soldier who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation told DW. " Of course, the big elephant in the room is corruption," says Kabiru Adamu. It has resulted in soldiers having to do without ammunition and equipment, and the cancellation of the deployment of troops to locations where the army is urgently needed.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/guestcolumn/nigeria-sees-pre-election-resurgence-of-jihadist-attacks/

British MPs held a debate in Westminster Hall yesterday titled: "Nigeria: Armed Violence (Rural Communities)".  Jim Shannon, who introduced the debate, asked fellow MP John Howell:"Given his knowledge of Nigeria, can the hon. Gentleman see any reason why the Nigerian Government have been reluctant, unable or unwilling to respond to the high levels of violence?"  Howell, the Conservative MP for Henley replied: "That is an interesting question. There is an ethnicity element to it. President Buhari comes from the area that identifies with the Fulani. I am not going to make that point more strongly. I do not know the extent to which that ethnic belonging influences him and his actions. All I will say is that I agree that less action has been taken in this area than anyone would have liked."  It should be noted that Howell is the British government "envoy" to Nigeria.  This may have influenced how he answered the question.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/articles/british-mp-asks-whether-buhari-being-a-fulani-is-influencing-his-inaction-against-fulani-herdsmen/