₦airaland Forum

^^^

Ignored permanently. Packaged off to the nut case chambers once more. Keys flung into the Rio Grand. 

Ileke-IdI:
ROTFL.

But why shouldnt they fall for it? They're intelligent groups of ppl.

I rest my case.

Ileke-IdI:
Lol dont confuse intelligence with greed.

BkBaybee's ppl attempts to accuse us of 419, but it takes two to tangle. If they werent so overwhelmed with the possibility of getting a share from "An African prince's wealthy inheritance", they wouldnt have been scammed.

You know, what I was really getting at is that the people that reached this conclusion are the ones with a thinking problem. I don't know if you have come across any of those 419 letters. They are sooooooooo laughably stooopid and lame. Yet someone seemingly intelligent buys into them.

Something as stooopid as "Hey I have $45 million dollars which I stole yesterday. Could you help me hide it in your personal account?"

How many truly intelligent people would believe that? Yet it happened quite frequently.

bk/babe90:
Your question [/b]is "[b]Why Nigerians are the kings of 419" or "WHY ARE NIGERIANS THE KINGS OF 419?". Lol. English is a mother. . . . lol. IQ baby, IQ!!!lol

So did you see any question marks in my quote?

This is how you get scammed by the same people you qualify as mentally deranged.

The most laughable thing about this so called finding is that it omits the most important question, which is why Nigerians are the kings in 419, scamming some of the so called most intelligent citizens of the world to the tune of billions of dollars over the decade.

They need to take a closer look at Nigeria and to look regionally in Nigeria. They would be shocked by their findings.

Is it true that Chris Okotie has two wives?

Heard that in the grapevine.

^^

This is a more complete version of the story from Guardian Newspapers.

Zoning in PDP dead, says Nwodo

Says no more godfathers

Narrates story of his emergence as chairman

“YES, I said to BBC and I repeat to you again that zoning in PDP
has been jettisoned. There is no zoning on ground right now.
Absolutely, there is no zoning.”
That was the categorical statement of the chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dr. Okwesileze Nwodo, yesterday, in response to the raging controversy over the eligibility or otherwise of President Goodluck Jonathan to contest next year’s elections.

Speaking with journalists in Abuja yesterday on the issue, Nwodo who was the founding national secretary of the party gave the circumstances that led to the zoning arrangement and how it was invalidated by some members of the party. According to him, when PDP made efforts to implement the arrangement, some members of the party from the North, including the late Alhaji Abubakar Rimi and Chief Barnabas Gemade still went ahead to buy nomination forms.

Nwodo remarked: “In 1999, there was zoning and only one
Northerner insisted on his inalienable right to the Nigerian
Constitution to contest against the zoning arrangement of the PDP.     The PDP took its rule down and I wrote a letter to him and returned his cheque. That was the late Abubakar Rimi of blessed memory.
“In 2003, after four years of Obasanjo, candidates sprang up from across the country. They paid, they canvassed. Nobody returned their money. Nobody wrote them that there was a zoning.

“In 2007, there were more candidates from Southern Nigeria than Northern Nigeria and I think if that election was allowed to hold without interference; may be anybody among Peter Odili, Donald Duke or Sam Egwu would have won. They all paid. Nobody returned their money. Nobody stopped them. Nobody talked
about zoning. They all contested. Why zoning now? Why? We have jettisoned it but we can revisit it. I’m not afraid about revisiting it. If we think that we need to revisit zoning today, let us revisit zoning. But the one we did in 1999, no, no, no, no, it has been jettisoned by PDP itself. So, those who are talking about that
agreement are not following the history of the party.

The party has
never stopped anybody after 1999 on the altar of zoning. But if they want us to zone now, we will go through the process. We will start from the Working Committee, we will prepare a memo on the advantages and the disadvantages of zoning. We will take the memo to the Caucus.”
  Nwodo continued: “The parliament and the government will make their input on which way to go. We will take it to the BoT; the conscience of the party and draw from their wealth of experience. Then we will modify the scale with their input. And then we will have the final debate at NEC, which takes final decision for PDP. Right now, nobody can get up and tell me there was zoning or there is zoning. If we want to zone, we have to go through this process because the earlier arrangement on zoning is not working any more.”

On the election of candidates for various positions and in particular, for the presidency for the 2011 election, the national chairman assured that the party would get it right stressing that there would be a repeat of the presidential primary in Jos, Plateau state in 1998 where a transparent exercise was conducted.
His words: “I think that is the easiest one to address because you know that our party is the largest party in our country and probably the largest in Africa. For us to have a presidential election and we only have one candidate, then something is wrong. There must be different candidates and each candidate must have his own programme for Nigerians. We will look forward to nomination forms that all these candidates will buy. When I was National Secretary, I think about six candidates vied for the slot in Jos or more. There was no problem. We had a free, transparent primary
election. At the end of the day, I think it was the first primary
election anywhere in the third world that was so transparent; that all the candidates agreed with the results of the primary, filed behind the winner who won the election. We had an Appeal Panel but we didn’t have one single appeal in that election. So, I don’t see any problem with a lot of our members wanting to be presidential candidate of PDP.”
  “What I promise them as the National Chairman is that there will be a repeat of Jos. It will be transparent and it will be a showcase.

Those who watch it live on television will see that it is possible again to have such a thing in Nigeria and we can keep repeating it for the life of our country. That is the way things should be and that is the way they are going to be.”
He noted that the crises rocking the party stemmed from the activities of godfathers who have hijacked PDP and promised to remove the cankerworm.
He went on: “The root of 90 per cent of the crises is what I have been preaching against from the very day I made my inaugural speech. It is the matter of handling the party to godfathers or godmothers and excluding the rest of the stakeholders. That is why I am saying we’ve got to push this party back to the hands of the people. The party belongs to the people. It is Peoples Democratic Party. I will keep saying this. I will keep repeating it. I will never be tired of repeating it because that is the truth. This party belongs to the people. It doesn’t belong to any one person and all these crises are generated by one person amortizing the party to himself and then every other person is shut out. So, what we want to do is to try and reconcile all the stakeholders and make sure that everybody has a stake. If everybody has a stake, I don’t think there should be problem except one person who may be greedy. If he doesn’t have the whole structure to himself, then there will be no
way forward for such a person. We only have one way forward and that is for all of us, all the stakeholders in every state of Nigeria to be comfortable about the structure of the PDP in their states. And that structure with the National Executive of the party can deliver free and transparent primary in each of the states of the federation.   Then I don’t see where there will be problem again.”

He attributed his emergence as national chairman of the party to God, saying: “No godfather supported me o. They are stakeholders. The South eastern stakeholders sat with the President and, out of a number of candidates, zeroed on me. They
took it to the Caucus, which comprises the parliament, the party and the government. There again it was debated forthwith. If your ear is on the ground, you would have heard during the reception programme organised for me. At the end of the day I came out as the choice of the Caucus. Then they took it to the Board of Trustees (BOT). Many people said I will never pass through the BOT because of my ‘wahala’ with OBJ in the past but he presided over the meeting. In fact, it was at that point that I had a unanimous acceptance. Then, we left the BOT and we came to the National Executive Committee (NEC) and again the NEC was unanimous. Where is the godfather with unanimous members?”
  “Before we went to the Caucus, the South-East governors took me to the council of governors. Again at the council of governors, I came out almost unanimous. What they told me was that it was unanimous when they called me. Then people said; Ah! these governors are imposing Chairman again and I have to battle that I am not a candidate of the governors.”
  Meanwhile, the members of PDP in the House of
Representatives who fought on the floor of the chamber a few weeks ago yesterday had a marathon meeting with the party leadership. One of them, Dorris Uboh, representing Ika Federal Constituency in Delta State, denied slapping any member of the chamber as alleged in some quarters.

Speaking before the commencement of the meeting, Uboh said:  “I didn’t slap anybody. The tape of the incident of the day is everywhere. All the media houses have it.  I am sure when you look at it in any media house of your choice, you will not see me slapping anyone and the member that was allegedly slapped by me has not come out to say I slapped him. I was not even talking to him. I was talking to another person when Hon. Chinyere Igwe slapped me on my neck instead. I didn’t  slap anyone. Eseme Eyibo, Chairman, House Committee on Media has been going around saying that I slapped someone. Let him bring evidence. At least, he is an Honourable member and he is Chairman (Media). So, he has access to the tapes of that day, let him show the Nigerian public where I slapped anybody. He is a Christian and an elderly man. I am deeply surprised that he would degenerate to that level to lie, because he has been lying to the Nigerian public. I think it is just an excuse by him to justify how they treated and manhandled me. They assaulted me, they battered me on the floor of the House.”
Suspicion that President Goodluck Jonathan might contest the 2011 presidential election has continued to fuel the debate on zoning.

That debate has split even the PDP leadership with some like the former president Olusegun Obasanjo arguing that there was no agreement in the PDP that power will rotate between the North and the South. Some members of the PDP from the North have called him a liar.
Pioneer National Chairman of the PDP, Chief Solomon Lar has explained further that the concept of zoning the presidency followed a request from the South, particularly the South-West, saying that they would boycott further participation in political activities since they won an election, which the North annulled. So they were not happy and they felt that Nigerians didn’t like them.
“So we said, if that is the case, let us allow power to go to the South particularly to the South-West because of the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential elections and the subsequent death of the acclaimed winner of the election, Chief MKO Abiola. So, many Nigerians were not happy over the annulment of June 12 1993 elections and the death of Abiola. So, we were boxed into a corner.”

He, however, admitted that despite the zoning that presidential aspirants from the North ran against Obasanjo.
Northern politicians have argued that the North should be allowed to complete the two terms of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and that President Jonathan should not contest.
After an inaugural meeting in Abuja, where the Northern Elders Forum insisted that the North would produce the president in 2011, the elders met recently in Kaduna.

The high point of a recent meeting in Kaduna was a division in the ranks of the northern governors and elders. The meeting ended with the governors resolving to consult to other stakeholders on the twin dominant political issues in the country. Some northern leaders have also called for Jonathan to continue. Unable to find a compromise, the Northern Elders are planning for a northern political summit on July 15 in Kaduna to further thrash the issue.

http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/

Well, at least it is now official. Maybe all these talks of betrayals will now die naturally. Apparently the PDP never observed zoning after 1999.

[size=16pt]Zoning dead in PDP–Nwodo[/size]

National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo, has given an official position on the controversial zoning arrangement in the party. Even as 19 northern governors met in Kaduna last week, with a resolution to get a feedback from their people on the faltering arrangement, before making a final pronouncement. The issue appears to have been foreclosed as Nwodo told journalists that zoning was dead in the PDP.

Speaking with journalists in Abuja yesterday, the PDP National Chairman submitted that the zoning arrangement was applied in 1999 and had since been observed in the breach.

“There is no zoning on ground right now. Absolutely no zoning, because in 1999, there was zoning and only one northerner insisted on his alienable right in the Nigerian Constitution to contest against the zoning arrangement of the PDP.
“The PDP put its foot down and I wrote a letter to him and returned his cheque. That’s Abubakar Rimi of blessed memory.

“In 2003, after four years of Obasanjo, candidates sprang up from across the country. They paid, they canvassed. Nobody returned their money, nobody wrote them that there was a zoning. Nobody! “In 2007, there were more candidates from Southern Nigeria than from Northern Nigeria and I think if that election was allowed to hold, without interference, maybe Peter Odili, maybe Donald Duke, maybe a Sam Egwu. Anybody could have won. They all paid. Nobody returned their money, nobody stopped them, nobody talked about zoning! They all contested. Why zoning now? Why?”

Nwodo disclosed that even as it had been observed in the breach, it could be revisited, but with the unanimity of all stakeholders in the party. “We jettisoned it, but we can revisit it. I am not afraid of revisiting it. If we think that we need to revisit zoning today, let us revisit zoning, but the one we did in 1999? No, no, it has been jettisoned by PDP itself.

“So, those who are talking about that agreement aren’t following the history of the party. The party has never stopped anybody after 1999 on the altar of zoning, but if they want us to zone now, we go through the mill.
“We will sit from the National Working Committee, we will prepare a memo on the advantages and disadvantages of zoning.

We will take the memo to the caucus, the parliament and the government will make their input, on which way to go. We will take it to the Board of Trustees, we drink from their wealth of experience, the conscience of the party, we modify the scale with their input and then we have a final debate at the National Executive Committee, which takes decisions for PDP.

“But right now, nobody can get up and say there was zoning or no zoning in PDP. If we want to zone, we have to go through these, because that one isn’t working anymore.” The National Chairman, however, assured all presidential aspirants on the platform of the party of a transparent presidential primary, that they would all be proud of.

“I don’t see any problem with a lot of our members wanting to be presidential candidate of the PDP. What I promise them, as national chairman, is that there would be a repeat of Jos. It would be transparent, it would be a showcase and those who would watch it live on television, they would see that it is possible again to have such a thing in Nigeria and we can keep repeating it for the life of our country.

“That’s the way things should be and that’s the way they are going to be,” he added.

http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2010/july/08/national-01-08-2010-001.htm

I would qualify my position more.

I support the south east governors for advising Igbo to stay away from next year's presidential elections because that is the BEST way forward. It does not mean that Ndigbo will support anyone blindly. It simply means that we would be free to make demands and extract solid concessions from the contestants without the usual rancor in the south east.
We can actually achieve more that way.

Having said that, I don't subscribe to this issue of betrayal. Nigerian history is full of betrayals ranging from the carpet crossing of 1953 to Aburi betrayal of 1966. So, betrayal is part and parcel of Nigerian body politic. That is why tribal, sub-regional or regional UNITY is PRICELESS in this game. That unity is paramount and we need it in Igboland.
Once we are united, we are unstoppable. Those who betrayed us in the past did so successfully because  they were united and we couldn't break them.

Now, they are the ones disunited, and I smell blood.

We stay away from this thing and play with ANYONE who gives us what we want in Nigeria.

No hard feelings.

. . .And I'm still wondering why some southerners are still trying hard to smuggle in a "Fashola" presidential bid as if he is the God we've been waiting for. That guy will not make a good president. My view.

In any case, we have a southerner there already. His name is Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.

With all due respect to the Yoruba, y'all won't smell this thing for a long time (you've had your turn for 8 years) because this is Nigeria. I advised Jonathan not to count on Yoruba votes. He would do well to listen to that advise.

Meanwhile, the north is still waiting for power to return. Jonathan should ensure that he gets south south and south east votes. If he works hard, he can get a good northern votes too (capturing middle belt).

That is the way to victory next year.

Immediately I saw this topic, I became convinced that some of the things we say here on nairaland is somehow getting to the Nigerian leaders, Igbo leaders in this case.

I remember arguing fervently against Igbo contesting national elections next year, and that we should instead stay away from it in order to allow us maneuver room. I'm glad the message is hitting home.
And of course the usual corners which trumpeted and fueled Igbo disunity for many years (using newspapers) are now running out of tricks, and understandably afraid.  

Let me try to explain what is happening in the East, and it is simple: The East is coming together.

The East cannot come together until the Igbo come together. When we finally rally round one goal, our neighbors will develop understanding and respect for us and will be more open to work with us because they cannot sabotage our goals anymore even if they tried. It will also be far harder for the North or anybody to take us for granted anymore in Nigeria because frankly, if we come together, we are UNSTOPPABLE!

So mens dept, Bluetooth and sjeezy8, you ain't seen nothing yet.  

Ileke-IdI:
Happy 4th of July, Bros. Arent you going to go watch the fireworks?

I'm headed there now. Will be there in about an hour and half. Happy 4th of July. 

naijamini:
I kinda support this.


I don't think you should kinda support this! Do the traditional rules and president-generals have standing police forces at their command? I know that the state governors don't either, but instead of throwing the responsibility to people event more impotent than yourself what these state governors need to do, if responsible, is either challenge the FG on its incompetent policing and call for state and local police forces, or just go ahead and make state arrangements.

Supported. However, until we get that local policing, someone has to be held accountable.

The South East has always called for state police, and this will play a role in whom we vote for next year.

One of the leading candidates from the north already promised to implement state police.

Make no mistake about it, we would vote for anyone who would implement state police.

^^
WTF are you doing in a Nigerian forum then? Why not go tell that to the Kenyans in a Kenyan forum?

Methinks this frees them up for real dealings.
For once, let us sit out a presidential race in Nigeria. I promise you that we will achieve far more by sitting it out than being frontally involved.
We vote for whoever gives us what we need in Nigeria.

udezue:
Lol abi? My parents are in SE comfortably. Even my relatives who from Delta Igbo area are in SE jeje.

Tell me about it.
I said the same thing in another thread. People forget that Asaba is the capital of an oil producing state and a lot of HOTELS are there. So folks migrate there naturally from across the bridge to have fun for the weekends. What they don't say it that those folks also return to the SE after the weekend. There is no major commercial center of note in Asaba, so what would those folks survive on if they stayed back there?
Simple questions conspicuously ignored by so called journalists.