₦airaland Forum

Giant Feet artwork in one of Calabars many pristine public parks.

My darling Atekong Drive, a typical Calabar street scene, beneficiary if the Calabar, later. Cross River, Clean & Green project, which involved the five largest towns of Calabar, Ikom, Ugep, Akpabuyo, and Ogoja, saw legislation in place to protect fauna and also noise pollution and disturbing the peace, by religious organizations and private parties, which was considered pollution too.

It also involved the central business district infrastructure projects expanded to these major towns.

New Calabar City Development Area at night.

Emporium B at Tinapa Business Park the largest non-religious indoor venue (25,000 capacity) in Nigeria.

Once, the Nigerian Bar Association conducted its annual Bar Conference here, with over 18,000 in single sittings. It often holds the annual meeting of the State Association of Local Govt. Chairpersons and Councillors, an occasion that never ceased to amaze me for the rare civility and decorum of its proceedings, based on the vision with which PDP Cross River State in 1999 ensured that as many graduates and other similarly educated candidates entered into the races for Local Govt. Councillorship and Chairmanship posts. Emporium B came to be used only for such conference sittings and for entertainment events with a capacity larger than the Cultural Center could take.

This was not what its surrounding Business Park was created in essence, and totality, however, to achieve. It was created as the veritable soul of the strategy with which to escape the State's paltry fiscal character, by being the hub of the retention of approximately 10-15% of our colossal wholesale and retail trade imports from the Middle East and the Far East, in a simple, yet genius, bid to become the second largest income generating State behind Lagos within 5 years of Tinapas 2007 opening. Agreements were already signed with scores of global traders such as Macy's, M&S, J. C. Penney, and Walmart as well as many lesser known brands, one or two of whom had opened shop.
Again, the horrific events permitted in the first week of the successor Administration in 2007, whereby Customs officials physically and brutally evicted staff and management of those early global traders, in lieu of a simple-to-resolve technical error regarding the use of foreign exchange critical to the trade arrangement, was the calculated death knell of this crucial aspect of Tinapa existence and the States destiny for greatness for which its far superior public value was implemented.

The success strategy was no better buttressed by the fact that even after ruining this colossal aspect, and the States fiscal opportunity to exit obscurity, the Bar Conference spent approx 12m Euros in Calabar in a week.

Entrance to the Obudu Cattle Ranch.

This sight always tells a non-first-timer that he or she is about to experience sheer magic.

What a getaway from Nigeria's chaos.
Grapes grown here to test its potential to produce top quality wine only suffered from the 9-month rainy season to make them slightly wet-of-center and requiring artificial counteractants to stop the end-product being too sweet. Golfing resorts with a handful of 5-star hotels can be built here to accommodate the Japanese for whom golfing at home is a millionaires pastime only ... they often go to Europe to play because it's cheaper than Japanese club membership. It's also perfect for Conference Hotels with which to attract African American professional Associations to have their annual conferences and seminars as a way to start reconnecting with the continent.
The climate is ideal ... you have heaters and fire places not air conditioners.
The native Becheve people, tall and light skinned, are cattle readers like the Fulani, and beekeepers too. Becheve honey is one of the numerous successful privatisation projects of the Duke Administration and is sold in hotels and super markets all over the country ... ask for it at Eko Hotel in V/I.
They even built our very own equivalent of Camp David, a magnificent presidential retreat, complete with an Air Force Base, both on a plateau slightly higher than the one on which the Ranch resort sits.

A truly majestic place to visit ... Obudu Ranch Resort and its magical surrounds never let one down!

View of the Obudu Mountain Range from the Ranch Resort.

A breakfast of toast, eggs, sausages, bacon, juice, a hot cup of coffee, a lovely conversation and a ciggy ... or, dinner of roast potatoes and steak with luscious veggies and wine sauce,a glass of wine, romance in the air at sunset over the mountains ... I prefer a monkeytail aperitif, followed by seafood pepper soup with pounded yam and afang with snails and cow leg, washed down with fresh palm wine.

The thin air does the rest ... Nuff said!

The tallest Nigerian Flag in the world, at Millennium Park, aka 11-11, one of several pristine public parks with a Memorial to fallen heroes, Calabar.

The biggest stage not in an indoor venue is always set up in this mainstay of Festival life ... Millennium Park!! Bank Chairmen, EU and World Bank Heads, sit on the grass alongside ordinary Calabarians and enjoy the show. This is the metaphorical and almost physical, center of Calabar.

This iconic Calabar landmark is sentimentally and jealously held close to Calabarian hearts.

11-11 is loved ... dearly ... by all!

A walk through Tortuga Island at the Marina Resort in Calabar, with its beautiful Carribbean-style pagoda bars, sit-out areas, live music, the only Slave Museum in Nigeria, Carousel, Cinema House, lounges and Quayside sit-out by the Calabar Marina.

There's something about the serenity and civility one experiences on every visit to Tortuga Island, (which at the very heart of Calabar with its excellent traffic management, lights and one-way systems designed by the Duke Administration, is not more than a 15-20 minute drive away from anywhere in Calabar) that offers even residents the feeling of a holiday away from daily routines.

The welcoming staff at the 3 Caribbean styled pagoda bars make one feel home away from a home only minutes away, in my case. The sight of UniCalabar students chatting romantically over a bottle of white wine and BBQ Croaker fish, quite uncommon in Nigeria, and the design of the entire resort area to accommodate all-comers from children on the Carousel to the aged strolling and then chatting on a quayside table listening to the waves lapping against the quay. The walk approaching (I prefer it to driving) from the top of the hill with the magical scenic beauty with which it calms one down in preparation for the simple delights of the quiet rhythms of nature's waters, leaves, birds, fresh air, and happy chatter over culinary delights to ones palette, never cease to amaze me as a masterpiece of Donald Dukes ability to create public value that improves upon the Nigerian capacity to think, socialise, and vision, in civility. A far cry from Abuja style "park joints" even in the evening, noisy and chaotic as Oshodi on a hot afternoon. I love the place.

The long walk to the far end of the Marina, with quayside on the left and a daunting natural wall of 60ft centuries-old trees all along the right like a scene out of a Harry Potter movie, ends in an idyllic opening into a calm green area where those with the heart to go all the way (trust me, grown men have been known to turn back halfway even in broad daylight) can sit down as if they are hundreds of miles away from the chatter a couple hundred yards away and from the town.

Brilliant!!!

The swimming pool at Tinapa, at the only Water Parks in Nigeria, complete with Wave Pool and water slides.

The veritable improvement in the psyche, of ordinary Nigerians form Cross River and surrounding States, that this leisure activity, only previously seen on television, had brought, is phenomenal. What N1000 per person and N500 for children achieves in the eyes, hearts, and minds, of ordinary Nigerians for whom this basic pleasure was once an impossible luxury, is an experience worth every penny for my witnessing it, and testament to the simple yet superior vision of the Duke Administration and its appreciation of the natural economic and psychological consequences of superior public commonwealth value implementation.

Of course the rapid expansion of the Maldives-style stilted pagoda huts over the artificial lakes next-door and other breathtaking aspects of the domestic leisure side of the back-end of Tinapa also got killed by the deliberate actions of 2007.

Anyway, millions of leisure man-hours have been enjoyed that had never ever been by ordinary Nigerians who can't afford to travel outside the country, in the wave pool and on the water slides, first, and only one, of its kind in Nigeria, even to date!!!!!!! When I designed the 42 kilometers of the Calabar Marathon, the most incredibly scenic professional marathon route in the country, complete with plans for a year-round continuum of sponsors' improvements on private and commercial properties along the entire route as the mainstay of the Marathon Committee, it started and ended around here, close to the gates of the Water Parks and by the proposed entrance to the lake area, within the hundreds of acres of the Tinapa complex.

It would be truly amazing if some people sleep well at night!

The only one in Nigeria, and the longest single-chain Cable Car ride in the world when it was built, going up the Obudu Mountain Range to the Ranch Resort.

Built by Julius Berger Construction and Trevi Foundation, this is without doubt the most challenging non-oil & gas related public civil engineering construction project in the history of this country, second only in engineering complexity, perhaps, to the long bridge on peat sand at the Lagos end of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway.

Having lost the photographic documentation of the construction of that long-bridge half a century ago, I am happy to paste the following documentary of the construction of the cable car at Obudu and the pride it brings of the Nigerian and other engineers that executed it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEstuFytabk

The effect on this ride, and the entire resort, of the cancellation, of the 6 flights a week from Abuja and Lagos via the Aero arrangement with Cross River State, in the first week of the successor Administration, is best left out of mind, most especially when the same Administration then approached Aero 5 years later in 2012 seeking to lease propeller planes with which to recommence weekly trips to Bebi from Lagos and Abuja.

The term "Niggargerian", meaning, ' to be mean, and wicked, even to ones self', has never been, and may never be, more appropriate than in description of the Liyel Imoke Administration of 2007-2015 in Cross River State.

It is little wonder that such a small-minded person was picked by Atiku as the Head of the Atiku/Obi Campaign in the South-Southern Zone.

Birds of the same feather ... crash into airplane engines together!

Typical Obudu Ranch Chalet buildings. Obudu Cattle Ranch, Obudu, Northern Cross River State.

7-9 hours drive (depending on the condition of the Federal highway) to the north of the State from Calabar, Obudu is the 5th largest town in the State, behind Calabar, Ogoja, Ikom, and Ugep, and sits towards the foot of the Nigerian side of the Obudu/Cameroon Mountain Range, and we'll below the Obudu Cattle Ranch sitting on a plateau at 1800 metres above sea level.
The Ranch had approximately 40-odd cabins when the Duke Administration decided to augment such an idyllic tourist attraction by building over 200 more cabins and upgrading all the existing facilities and imputing new ones such as the Canopy Walkway, the Bebi Airstrip to remove the incredibly long road trips to get there and the Cable Car to provide an alternative to the hour-long risque-ish drive up the winding road from Obudu town to the Ranch plateau.

A certain wonder of the world, at a height in the tropics where one literally walks through cloudburst in the early morning, with a summer-rainfall terrain that produces the juiciest of vegetables and the most succulent beef, I can't think of anywhere else in the world apart from possibly New Guinea where one can enjoy the almost majestic luxury of sitting on a park bench to observe fresh water forming above, and falling through, clouds. The taste of the natural water defies the imagination ... simply divine!

During the Duke Administration the anticipated cost of a trip to the Ranch quickly quadrupled as it became impossible to book a cabin anytime after six months in advance. The government made an arrangement with Aerocontractors to subsidise the shortfall below 70% occupancy of the seats of 3 flights a week each from Lagos and Abuja to Bebi Airstrip. The Cable Car, being the only one in the continental sub-region if not the entire continent, became a special draw for the feeling of breathtaking quiet explosion it offers riders in awe of the views it provides of the majestic mountain range.

Again, quite inexplicably, the succeeding Administration cancelled this arrangement with Aero and one of the largest income earners of the State declined rapidly.

The only monorail in Nigeria crossing the Cross River from Tinapa to the New Calabar City Development Area (Summit Hills), with the only state-of-the-art 2500 capacity Calabar International Conference Center in the background.

Summit Hills, the Beverly Hills of Nigeria, is built, similar to Tinapa across the river, with by far the best public civil infrastructure in Cross River State, hence in Nigeria by light years.
Real Estate features began with a 400-unit housing estate, a 300-bed hotel, a 110-bed private hospital, a couple of golfing-estates and of course much more planned to make it the most enjoyable place to live in Nigeria. That was the original plan of an Administration that delivered Tinapa for opening in the last year of its tenure in 2007.

The lethargy and unwillingness to carry on with this project critical to the strategy to catapult the State from fiscal obscurity to the second largest income generating , was one of the great wonders of the world in 2007. The 8-years of the next Administration were pitiful, and a site to lament upon, even for little children who could tell the difference.

Halting the flagship projects of its predecessor, as well as many others, the embarking upon its own projects alone, such as the $250m GE invested in its second-of-it's-kind factory in Calabar, only buttressed the folly of the inexplicable actions of the successor Administration ... especially when one looks at how the core business aspect of Tinapa would have impacted upon the $750m of Supply-Chain Management infrastructure invested by GE to support its factory, as well as its planned expansions.

One of the clearest examples of the effect of a lack of ideological basis of a party such as the PDP, was demonstrated by the inability of the Party to identify State Administration's policy implementations meeting the KPIs set on such ideology and ensuring that successive Administrstions have to continue on the set path of success.
But a party without ideology is nothing if not unable to give what it doesn't have.
11 years later, the PDP hasn't learnt this simple lesson. None of its candidates have any idea of the others' ideology.

The Old Residency Museum, Calabar, Cross River State, seat of power of Amalgamated Nigeria in 1914 and residence of Governor-General Lord Lugard, was also the seat of the Southern Protectorate of Nigeria beforehand and was built in 1884. Perfectly restored and maintained by the Donald Duke Administration in 1999.

Starting with its 1999 "Budget of Maintenance" which saw the restoration of all State owned facilities and property, a new cost-effective maintenance culture was enacted and implemented, resulting in, amongst others, ridding offices of televisions, fridges, and carpeting,along with their wasteful recurrent costs.

In an 8-year tenure that realised a paltry N90b income, this administration implemented exemplary commonwealth public value with the highest Public-Private Value Ratios in Independent Nigeria's history.
The critical realisation of the fundamental role of effective drainage systems, with the execution of two Julius Berger macro-drainage projects to last the next few centuries, saw the kind of public works cost reduction effect on property, healthcare, waste management, water provision, transport, civil works, and other physical planning related areas which helped achieve public projects execution not possible in any other State. Calabar is also the only place in Nigeria you can drink the tap water due to the exemplary execution of its World Bank Assisted Water projects by the Cross River State Water Board.

Legislation to limit noise pollution, protect the fauna, along with the Calabar, later CRS, Clean & Green project, by the Ministry of Environment, and the creation of the Office of the Public Defender and the Citizens Advice Bureau at the Ministry of Justice were other notable public value enhancing features.

This set the State up with a public value foundation with which to quickly move into the next year's Budget and the vision of the business and leisure tourism with which to use the public value to catapult the State out of its paltry income status typical of more than 20 States.

WHY DONALD DUKE REMAINS OUR BEST OPTION.
By Tajin Olusegun Taire
No, we reject PDP at the next polls, we reject APC at the next polls, and we embrace SDP and Donald Duke based on his unmatched performance of putting down the highest Public Commonwealth Value of any administration in this country since Independence, while he was a PDP Governor between '99-07.

We further embrace him for having, after that, resisting the ridiculous call to stay relevant and under govt perks as a Senator or Executive Office holder of the party, and further still for resigning from the Party in 09, refusing to join the GEJ Cabinet in 2011, refusing to join the Buhari Cabinet in 2015, and having the self respect to follow his own path, and the courage to do so now despite the zoning disease afflicting most Nigerians.

He was only governor for 8 years and his strategy was as impeccable as his execution was successful ... in putting down far superior public commonwealth value, with public parks and spaces the Queen of England can eat in next to ordinary Crossriverians, impeccably refurbished and maintained public facilities, the vision to know that two Julius Berger macro drainage projects would not only last 500 years but would reduce the real-economic comparative implementation and maintenance costs of all physical planning related (roads, healthcare, pavements, agriculture, property, hospitality, etc) projects in the State to less than 10% of those of ALL other States, enabling his State with the 26th largest income (of N90b in 8-years) out of 36 States, to implement what still today remains the only Cable Car ride in the country, ( the longest single-chain version in the world when built by Julius Berger and Trevi Foundation), still the only two Water Parks in the country permitting ordinary Nigerians who can't afford to travel the public value to enjoy an activity they only watch on TV at N1000 and N500 for kids for a day, still the only monorail in the country, the only resort of its kind in the country by adding 200 more cabins to the Obudu Ranch, the only proper festival in the country which once attracted N2.2b in corporate sponsorship of one edition, and which attracted 1.1m visitors one edition, and often gave local traders and retailers up to 7-months' income in December alone, turned Calabar into a mecca of conferences a revolving door whereby one Bar Association Conference alone saw the NBA sit, for the first-time in its history, 18,000 delegates in single sittings at Emporium B in Tinapa, the only non-religious indoor venue in the country with 25,000 capacity , in a week in which an EU study estimated that the NBA delegates spent €12m in Calabar, built the only one of its kind Presidential Retreat a la Camp David for Presidential vacations and conferences on a plateau above the ranch plateau with a full-fledged Air Force Base next-door, implemented the most superior natural history and conservation projects bringing unprecedented tourism revenues to Afi Reserve, with the Cercopan Drill Sanctuary, with forest canopy, forest cabins, as well as the crucial 300 Sq km Reserve enacted to protect the 30m European Barn Swallow that migrate to the area every year to mate, and the largest variety of Butterflies species in any one place on Earth, which made us discover that the webbed, flying, monkey is not in fact extinct, the vision to ensure that as many graduates as could contested for places in LG Councillorship and Chairmanship races in '99 which enabled us to witness smooth acceptance of and cooperation on rural projects such as the most successful rural electrification project to date, at 99% coverage, as well as be amazed at LG Conferences more civilised than NASS or even FEC meetings, the only place in Nigeria one can drink the tap water due to the impecably implemented World Bank projects by the CRS Water Board, the most advanced Ministry of Environment enacted and enforced laws against damaging fauna and noise pollution, the most advanced PWD enacted and enforced laws which ensured nobody can execute drainage, pavements, nor the ramp into private property, except PWD, resulting in standardisation and order, and physical planning that ensures all road, drain, street and traffic lights, green setbacks are completed before a 60-90 day moratorium before a single plot can be sold, (not achieved in one area in Lagos since '99), the superb waste management system that enacted all organic waste down effluent drain due to superior drainage, and then the enactment of prohibition of organic waste within 100 yards of public food preparation and consumption areas which enabled us to eat in the open in broad day light without encountering flies, the most advanced enacted and enforced Office of the Public Defender and Citizens Advice Bureau in the Ministry of Justice ensuring the apprehension and prosecution of injustice against minors, wards, and the weak, the superb Marina Resort offering ordinary Calabarians the opportunity to embrace serenity, civility, and the culture of thinking and visioning, the revolutionary tactics of removing carpeting, fridges, and TVs from all offices through the enactment of the '99 Budget of Maintenance, along with their colossal recurrent waste costs, and replacing with a culture of canteens and strict lunch hours even for Commissioners, the temerity to spend every night in Calabar in that first year visiting all projects in the dead of night without notice and calling the Commissioner and contractor to meet him there, sacking two Commissioners for lying at the previous EXCO and getting all else to sit up from then, the superlative vision to attempt to use all this superior public commonwealth value to create the Tinapa Business & Leisure Park, aimed at securing just 10-15% of Nigerian wholesale and retail trade imports from the Middle and Far East in a federal tax free zone which had already the signatures of Walmart, Marks & Spencer, J.C. Penney, and Macy's, as well as scores of other not so well known names, with a couple already moved in to the complex completed by 2007, only for his successor administration, without any warning, from the very first day , to collaborate with Customs to raid the place and manhandle and evict and destroy staff, property and management on the pretext of an easy to resolve technical error in the use of forex critical to the agreement with the foreign traders and in a move clearly designed to be the death knell of the project that was simply and unequivocally destined to catapult the State into the 2ND largest income generating after Lagos within 5 years of Tinapa opening.
Rather, his partner and successor cancelled the special arrangement with Aero for 3 flights a week each from Abuja and Lagos to Bebi airstrip at Obudu, which ensured enough patronage that the envisioned price of accommodation quadrupled at the ranch and one would book six months in advance to get a room in any of the 259 cabins, only for him to realise his folly after 4-5 years and start begging corporations to return for festival, begging Aero to lease the State propeller planes to do one flight a week from Lag and Abj, after facilities had run down, and he had ruined, for then, the stellar chances of a people who had embraced the magnificent work and vision of his predecessor.

No wonder he's still in the PDP ...

Next to the word "Niggargerian", meaning ' to be mean, and wicked, even to ones self', in the dictionary, a picture of Liyel Imoke should be there.

Especially when i heard that he turned around and told someone in confidence that he never intended to wreck those projects but his wife had advised him that if they didn't he would never get the credit for them and only Donald would ...

All in all, we know he is typical of Nigerians, their Parties, politicians, and supporters and electorate, and after we do our best with this effort, setting up an alternative platform for national consideration by the sane few, we still have the mission to go back and complete the paradise of commonsense public commonwealth value and development-economic progress that was begun in '99 in CRS.

WE WILL ACHIEVE IT AND BE PROUD OF THE HIGHEST PUBLIC-PRIVATE VALUE RATIOS IN THIS COUNTRY ... WITH EASE!

Go to the villages, LGAs, Senatorial Districts, etc of all the presidential candidates and aspirants of the PDP and APC who had been in politics and govt for 40-50 years and you would not be comfortable to permit your dog to walk around freely in public for fear of devastating disease.

In Donald Duke’s, my cook and driver will come home and tell me they watched a performance sat on the grass in the park this evening, next to Tony Elumelu, the Austrian Ambassador, the head of the EU, World Bank, and UNICEF, and be off to play in their volleyball league in a park in their N80K per year rent area, which is the same as the park in my N1.2m per year area.
We know how difficult it is for the Niggargerian to understand the sanctity of Public Value and see his wretchedness and ask why he rushes off to spend his peanuts in enjoyment of European, American, and Asian public value ...

We wish them the best of luck as they continue to huff and puff, proud that they wallow in their own faeces ... just because they wear Rolex, drive G-wagon, and drink Crystal, ON TOP OF THE PILE OF DECOMPOSING SHIT!

The Porsche was most likely resprayed and the error came from the painters when replacing the emblem after re-spraying. Naija painters routinely make this type of error.

Everything necessary must be done to ensure that tyrant does not come back to continue ruining the country as he has been doing since 2015.

WHY BUHARI MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO CONTEST IN THE 2019 ELECTION. HE HAS NO CERTIFICATE AS REQUIRED. - Chidi Cali

To drive A Dangote Trailer, one is required to have an OND, HND or BSc Certificates, but Buhari want to re-contest for the Nigerian President's seat with No WAEC Certificate (as he dropped out of school).

On this day, October 26, 2018, I Chidi Cali want to re-state that Buhari has NO VERIFIABLE CERTIFICATE anywhere in the world to present to INEC as a Presidential candidate in the 2019 election.

WAEC/CAMBRIDGE GCE: - Buhari did not sit for the Cambridge examination in 1961 as his names (Muhammadu, Mohammed or Mohamed Buhari) is not in the UK Examination body's List of candidates from 1960-1962. His name(s) is also NOT on the WAEC candidates list in both Ghana and Nigeria Offices from 1960-1962. Any attempt by Buhari or his agents to present any document to INEC representing WACE or GCE certificate may constitute an Offence.

CERTIFICATE/ARMY RECRUITMENT: - Buhari presented no certificate to the Nigerian Army in 1961 when he joined them, as he has none. The only paperwork came from his school principal, stating that, "I consider that he (Buhari) will pass west African school certificate, with credit in English, Maths and three other subjects". As you can see, this letter is self-explanatory. You cannot pass an examination you never sit.

NIGERIA DEFENCE ACADEMY (NDA): - Buhari did not attend the NDA as claimed. He attended Royal Military Forces Training College (RMFTC) for few months (End of 1961 to the beginning of 1962) for normal Army recruitment and physical fitness training. This is not a certification programme. RMFTC was renamed NDA (established on the 5th of February 1964), and regular courses were introduced thereon.

UK MILITARY TRAINING: Buhari attended the Aldershot based, Mons Officer Cadet School. No Certificate was issued to Buhari, as he passed no examination for the short period he was in the UK in 1963. Cadet School information collaborates this.

DEFENCE SERVICE STAFF COLLEGE, WILLINGTON, INDIA: - As usual, Buhari attended the staff college and did not sit for their examinations. The Defence Services Staff College, Willington does not issue a certificate of attendance to its attendee in 1974.

US WAR COLLEGE: - Buhari left this College in 1980. He has in his Wikipedia page that he was offered a Master Degree in the same college in 1980.
Chidi Cali and loads of Nigerians wrote to the US War college in 2014 and 2015 and they confirmed that they started their Master program in 2000 and there is no way Buhari should have gotten a Masters degree in that college in 1980. Again, no certificate was issued to Buhari.

President Buhari has no certificate to submit with his application to the INEC as required by the Nigerian constitution and the electoral act.
THEREFORE, IN 2019, BUHARI WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO CONTEST THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION AS HE DOES NOT MEET THE MINIMUM REQUIREMENT TO BE A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE. THIS IS NOT 2003, 2007, 2011 OR 2015, AS THE LAW MUST BE FOLLOWED TO THE LATER.

It took APC and their Agents three weeks to go to court to force WAEC to publish Sen Adeleke's Results, nothing STOPS Nigerians NOW to go to the Nearest court to make the same request. Legal processes should be activated to stop INEC from accepting Buhari's application that is not supported with the Minimum Academic requirement. - Chidi Cali

© Chidi Cali

MalcoImX:
Say what you want to say, the treasury will never be opened for you as was the case during GEJ.

Usual strategy of BMC to attack the messenger when the message can't be faulted.

You are not allowed to be corrupt if you are not an APC member.

PRESIDENT BUHARI IS NOT AGAINST CORRUPTION
Femi Aribisala.

It is one thing to talk against corruption. It is another thing altogether to be against corruption. President Buhari only talks against corruption.

Muhammadu Buhari ran for election as president of Nigeria in 2003, 2007 and 2011. He failed woefully on all three occasions. He failed because he did not have the attributes that Nigerians wanted in a president. Many, including this writer, felt he was too sectional. His stint as military head-of-state between 1984 and 1985 was eloquent testimony of this.

Among other misdeeds, Buhari preferred a Fulani from Niger to an Igbo from Nigeria as Secretary-General of the OAU. He locked in jail, Vice-President Alex Ekwueme, an Igbo; but only put under house arrest, President Shehu Shagari, a Fulani. He told Lam Adesina of Oyo State that the Fulani herdsmen of the North are his people, as opposed to the Yoruba farmers of the South. He proclaimed a determination to install sharia law all over the federation.

As a result, in 2011, out of a total of 30 million votes cast, Buhari could only muster 391,922 votes from all the states of the entire Southern Nigeria.

Anti-corruption rhetoric

However, in 2015, Buhari ran for president yet again, and succeeded. He succeeded for one singular reason: he ran on an anti-corruption platform. By 2015, Nigerians were fed up with the rampant corruption that took place under the PDP. While then President Goodluck Jonathan himself was not believed to be corrupt, the popular perception was that he tolerated corruption. Indeed, it was believed that corruption went to an unacceptable level under his stewardship.

Enter, therefore, an image-laundered and refurbished Muhammadu Buhari, smelling of roses. Buhari was presented to Nigerians as our own home-grown “Mr. Integrity.” He mesmerized a gullible electorate seeking a corruption-free presidential Messiah with highfaluting anti-corruption rhetoric: “We cannot build an economy where corruption is the working capital.” “I will kill corruption before it kills Nigeria.”

As a result, many Nigerians who had been implacably opposed to him in his earlier three election campaign efforts, swung to his support. These included Nigeria’s Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, who had earlier warned that: “In Buhari, we have been offered no evidence of the sheerest prospect of change.” It also included men like Nasir El-Rufai, who observed earlier that Buhari remains “perpetually unelectable” as a result of his “insensitivity to Nigeria’s diversity and his parochial focus.” Even his former political nemesis, Olusegun Obasanjo, became his supporter.

However, after nearly four years in power, we now know that President Buhari has no real anti-corruption clothes. It is one thing to talk against corruption. It is another thing altogether to be against corruption. President Buhari only talks against corruption. His body language and policy options show conclusively that he is not really against corruption. Buhari’s anti-corruption is merely a means to an end. That end is not to rid Nigeria of corruption but to get into power and to stay in power.

Scandalous PTF

If President Buhari was truly against corruption, he would not have agreed to serve under Sani Abacha, one of the most corrupt Heads-of-State ever in the history of Nigeria. In 1994, Abacha appointed Buhari as chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund. Between 1994 and 1999, the PTF had a colossal budget of N181 billion. If President Buhari was truly Mr. Integrity, it would not have been discovered that the PTF he presided over was riddled with corruption.

In 1999, President Obasanjo set up an Interim Management Committee (IMC) headed by Haroun Adamu to investigate the activities of the PTF. While today, the EFCC is haranguing Ayodele Fayose over N6.9 billion; in 1999, the Adamu Committee discovered that a whopping N25 billion disappeared from PTF coffers under Buhari’s stewardship.

Nigerians need to know that, under Buhari, the PTF specialized in buying expired drugs. A team of pharmacists commissioned to verify the Drugs Revolving Fund Programmes of the PTF discovered the prevalence of expired drugs all over the country worth over N2.4 billion. Ambulances that could have been purchased for N3 million were inflated under Buhari’s stewardship to N13 million, resulting in a loss of N900 million.

The Adamu Committee discovered that in the PTF Assisted HIV/AIDS programmes under Buhari’s stewardship, there was an excessive order of HIV/AIDS kits which resulted in most of the kits expiring before use, and gross inflation of the purchase price. This brought a loss of N579 million to the Fund. In the health sector, frames that could have been bought for N80 and N880 were inflated to N1,900 resulting in a loss of N13 million.

The Adamu Committee valued the PTF residential estate under Buhari at N328 million. However, the contract was inflated by N374 million to N703 million. The finances of the estate were so fishy, the Obasanjo government decided to confiscate the entire project. The same sharp practices were discovered with regard to the extension of the PTF headquarters under Buhari’s stewardship. The Committee valued the construction cost at N326 million, but this was inflated by Buhari’s PTF to N461 million, thereby defrauding the fund of N135 million.

In the rural water supply programme, the Committee was able to recover an estimated N1 billion paid illegally by Buhari’s PTF to contractors as a result of overpricing. In the National Health and Educational Institutions Rehabilitation programme, over N600 million was recovered from contractors due to non-performance and overpricing. In the National Educational Material Procurement Programme, N900 million was recovered.

The rural telecommunication programme was also riddled with fraud. Buhari’s PTF paid N1.6 billion as mobilization for the programme without any contract being signed whatsoever. In the Administration Account, N664 million was recovered. In the Project Account, N2.4 billion in discrepancies was recovered. In the Treasury Account, N510 million was recovered.

How can Buhari be known as Mr. Integrity and yet have this kind of tack-record? The Haroun Adamu Committee insisted that Buhari himself should be probed by the government. However, because of the unspoken fraternity in Nigeria whereby generals don’t probe generals, Obasanjo declined the recommendation to probe Buhari. But earlier this year, Obasanjo expressed his regret at not probing Buhari given the damning report about his stewardship at the PTF. The truth of the matter is that if Buhari was indeed anti-corruption, he would not have presided over a corruption-riddled PTF.

Group Captain Usman Jibrin, a board member of the PTF, resigned from the organization in protest over the blatant irregularities in Buhari’s appointment of the Afri-Project Consortium (APC) led by Salihijo Ahmad as consultants for the organisation. As a matter of fact, a principal actor in the PTF consultancy scam committed suicide immediately the probe into the organization’s affairs was instituted for fear of being exposed.

Hypocritical anti-corruption

If President Buhari were against corruption, he would not have been an advocate and defender of the criminally-corrupt. Nigerians need no convincing that former Head-of-State, Sani Abacha, was corrupt. After his death, it was discovered that he stashed huge chunks of public funds running into billions of dollars in different countries in Europe.

Nevertheless, on the 10th anniversary of his death, Buhari told incredulous Nigerians that Abacha never stole. He maintained that all the allegations of looting the treasury leveled against him were “baseless.” He said: “ten years after Abacha, those allegations remain unproven because of lack of facts.”

Buhari held this position in spite of the millions of dollars of Abacha’s loot recovered from banks around the world, and in spite of the fact that the Abacha’s family signed a formal agreement to return over $1 billion of such monies to the Nigerian government. Paradoxically, the same president who insisted Abacha never stole said this to Nigerians through his Twitter handle in 2016: “Nigeria is awaiting receipt from Swiss Govt. of $320 million, identified as illegally taken from Nigeria under Abacha.”

So did Abacha steal or not? According to Mr. President, Abacha never stole because President Buhari was part and parcel of the Abacha administration. To admit Abacha was corrupt is to admit that the PTF he presided over under Abacha was also corrupt.

We can see, therefore, that President Buhari’s anti-corruption fervor is merely self-serving. He regards only his political opponents as having the copyright on corruption. By this token, every allegation of corruption leveled against his friends and financiers must be “baseless.” When Obasanjo supported him, Obasanjo was not a thief. Immediately Obasanjo stopped supporting him, Buhari alleged Obasanjo mismanaged a $16 billion power project as president.

As a result, in the last four years, President Buhari has prosecuted a war on corruption essentially against his political opponents. For Buhari, all PDP members are guilty of corruption until proven innocent. The president does not even wait for the verdict of the courts. The accused are tried and convicted in the media by the president and his cohorts, as long as they do not belong to the APC.

Corruption-ridden government

President Buhari cannot campaign for re-election on an anti-corruption platform when, in the last four years, he has condoned corruption among his cohorts. Corruption never disqualifies anyone from prominence in Buhari’s APC. Bisi Akande, the first chairman of the APC, was jailed on corruption charges. The APC minority leader in the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, was convicted in the United States for defrauding a client.

A judicial commission of enquiry set up by the Rivers State government maintained that, under former governor Rotimi Amaechi, now Minister of Transport, a whopping N53 billion disappeared from the Rivers State Reserve Fund. Babatunde Fashola, former governor of Lagos and now Minister of Works and Housing, was accused of spending N78 million of government money upgrading his personal website and of inflating the cost of the Lekki-Ikoyi link-bridge from N6 billion to N25 billion. None of these cases were taken up by the EFCC.

A federal high court has ordered that criminal proceedings be instituted by the EFCC against APC chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, for corrupt enrichment as governor of Edo. If the court had not ordered this, it would clearly not have been done by the EFCC.

Abubakar Audu was under prosecution by the EFCC for misappropriating N11 billion of state funds when he was governor of Kogi between 1999 and 2003. Nevertheless, he was nominated as APC governorship candidate for Kogi in 2015. In spite of the fact that the EFCC had filed charges of corruption against Timipre Sylva for defrauding Bayelsa State of N19 billion between 2009 and 2012; he nevertheless became the governorship candidate of the APC for Bayelsa in 2016.

Under this anti-corruption president, $43 million discovered in an apartment at Osborne Towers, Ikoyi, Lagos has been buried. Nothing more has been heard about the award of $25 billion worth of contracts without due process by Dr. Maikanti Baru, the GMD of the NNPC, as alleged by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu. The president has kept mum over the DSS indictment of the acting chairman of the EFCC, Ibrahim Magu, and the report of the investigative panel on him set up by the Attorney General.

Nothing more has been heard from the probe panel on the N500 million bribe allegedly paid by MTN to Abba Kyari, the chief of staff to the president, designed to influence the government to discontinue its heavy stance on the $5 billion fine imposed on the company. Then there is the Abdulrashid Maina scandal, whereby a man who turned fugitive when alleged to have misappropriated N2 billion of the pension fund and was on the EFCC wanted list, found his way back into the country and into the federal civil service with promotion.

We are still waiting to be told the owner of the Legico Shopping Plaza in Lagos where the EFCC claimed it found N448 million in cash. Under this administration, the corruption scandals are unrelenting. How can Buhari expect Nigerians to believe he is sincere in fighting corruption under these hypocritical circumstances?

TonyeBarcanista:
Failed combination

Your opinion.

Johnnyessence:
post your source here ok.

Here is the link :https://www.facebook.com/1537897366513963/posts/1926210011016028/

Johnnyessence:
ok post it here then. it is very important on nairaland platform to post the source of information. post the link of the facebook page you copy it from.

I am sorry I am unable to copy the link as the Facebook app on my phone does not provide links to copy pages. I will still try to find a way round it though.

Johnnyessence:
post your source here ok.

The source is the official Facebook page for Donald Duke.

The Presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, Mr Donald Duke, in consultation with the Party have chosen Dr Junaid Mohammed as his running- mate in the Presidential election 2019.
He was born in Dala, Kano city, on April 12 1950. He trained as a medical doctor at the Kharkov Medical Institute, USSR ( the former Soviet Union) graduating in1976with First Class Honours with distinction in all subjects.
Dr Junaid Mohammed is a well known academic and on the political scene as a political warhorse/ firebrand. He has served in several capacities at both the federal and state levels; including the House of Representatives 1979- 1984.
Dr Mohammed was a founding member of the PRP in 1976 under the leadership of the late Mallam Aminu Kano and was until his nomination the SDP National Deputy Chairman for the North-West.
Dr Junaid Mohammed brings to the SDP presidential ticket, geopolitical reach, acceptance and in-depth the knowledge of Nigerian politics.

CC lalasticlala mynd44

prospero5:
in 2007 or thereabout, there was so much noise about Tinapa by Donald Duke. did he not make any survey on such a huge project with its relative benefits as presented to Nigerians before embarking on it?

Thanks so much for the question, the Tinapa project was the biggest project embarked on by Donald Duke and it had the potential to make Cross Rivers State Nigeria's second commercial capital second only to Lagos. Prior to the commencement of the project, a world class consulting firm (KPMG) was commissioned to carry out a feasibility study on the project and it was based on this study that the project was embarked on. The project was deemed so viable that they got the world's biggest retail chain (Wal-Mart) to sign on to be the anchor tenant of Tinapa taking up two of the four proposed emporiums. Everything about the planning of Tinapa was �% top notch and it would have actually transformed the economy of Nigeria if it was allowed to operate. What then went wrong?

There were two things primarily that made the Tinapa project fail, firstly Tinapa has the status of a Free Trade
Zone meaning that there ought to be duty waivers or concessions for certain categories of goods imported into the country through it. The first problem that Tinapa had was that the Customs refused to recognize it as a Free Trade Zone that it rightfully was and they charged exhorbitant duty on goods coming in through the Zone thus rendering it commercially unviable. The second major problem with Tinapa was that the Federal government refused to keep it's part of the agreement to dredge the Calabar river so ocean going vessels can come through and discharge goods directly to the Zone, as a result of this due to transhipment costs in addition to the high duties charged, cost of goods sold in Tinapa became higher than it was meant to be and made it unattractive to the buying public.

The third problem with Tinapa is that the succeeding Liyel Imoke administration showed very little interest in the project. If they had shown more interest they would have tackled the federal government when they reneged on the agreement to dredge the Calabar river and gotten them to compel the Nigerian Customs Service to respect the terms of the Free Trade Zone that Tinapa was. I hope I have been able to shed more light on what exactly went wrong with the Tinapa project. Thanks

Please note that only responsible questions will be responded to.

As a patriotic Nigerian, I have decided to support one of the very best Nigeria has to offer in terms of good leadership based on his phenomenal track record of achievements which was attained whilst keeping his integrity very intact.

I present to you the man Donald Duke, I will be willing to answer any questions you may have pertaining to his presidential credentials and why he is the best of all the candidates running for the office of the president.

Please find below the link to the Donald Duke volunteer group. Your participation in group activities will be highly appreciated.https://web./165423823983563/?ref=bookmarks

Join us today because #EveryoneMatters

A Facebook group has been created for all patriotic Nigerians who are interested in volunteering to support the presidential campaign of Donald Duke. Please find below the link to the Donald Duke volunteer group. Your participation in group activities will be highly appreciated.https://web./165423823983563/?ref=bookmarks

Now is a good time to revive this thread, let's all join hands to vote Donald Duke for president because #EveryoneMatters

This is obviously a sponsored article, absolutely no substance to it.

He is a mad man, sixteen years of PDP brought unprecedented economic growth to Nigeria whilst he brought recession and poverty. Useless lifeless dunce.