SaharaReporters raises alarm over military siege *Accuses Jonathan of pouring fund into opposition candidate’s election

President Goodluck Jonathan is reportedly behind the apparent militarization of upcoming elections in Ondo State, having replaced local police with soldiers, a source in the police told SaharaReporters today.
The source claimed that in the last two hours, the National Security Adviser, Lt. Col. Sambo Dasuki and the Minister of State for Defence, Erelu Olusola Obadan have taken control of the state and flooded it with soldiers.
An observer in Akure confirmed to SaharaReporters that there is an unusually high number of checkpoints mounted by soldiers in the state but stated the soldiers were “civil”.
The dramatic deployment of soldiers has raised serious concerns by candidates in tomorrow’s polls that the elections will be rigged.
Interestingly, Mr. Jonathan does not support his party’s candidate, Olusola Oke but has reportedly poured funds into the candidacy of the Labour Party candidate and incumbent Governor, Olusegun Mimiko.
Competition is fierce for the governorship of Ondo State considering the region’s extreme oil-wealth.

LibertyReport

Who Killed Dele Giwa? By Bayo Oluwasanmi

Dele Giwa shortly after he wass killed by a parcel bomb

By Bayo Oluwasanmi

Today is the 26th anniversary of the assassination of Dele Giwa, the unapologetically brash journalist, the founding editor of Newswatch magazine.
Every October 19 Nigerians are forced to lock their eyes on screaming newspaper headlines: “Who Killed Dele Giwa?”
For a quarter of a century now, the same question had burned like acid in our brains.  The gory picture of a badly shattered body of Giwa continued to plague our minds after 25 years. And oddly enough, the Nigerian judicial system had successfully tap danced around the question.
Giwa was a flaming journalist with a fiery message of rebuke for the oppressive military regime of Ibrahim Badamosi Babaginda (IBB). Giwa was the pioneering journalist in Nigeria who blazed the path for investigative journalism bottled in a weekly authoritative brand known as Newswatch.
He was a watchman with bravura and strong moral fiber committed to a strong sense of right and wrong. Giwa’s creative message and method earned him reputation as a skilled writer, tough, and uncensored in his style.
He had a knack for packaging stories that injected sleeplessness and nightmares in the tyrants of his days. Needless to say, his fierce and uncompromising style made him a natural target of IBB administration.
Giwa writes with the supple grace of a swan and the boldness of a beaver.
Giwa, on that fateful day of 1986, had been extracted from our midst through a parcel bomb. We all felt the ripples of the bomb and we sobbed like milk-less baby.
The indefatigable legal surgeon, late Gani Fawehinmi was bent on finding the killer (s) of Giwa. Fawehinmi literally armed with a defibrillator as it were, relentlessly shocked back to life the question: Who killed Dele Giwa?
Two days before the arrival of the death parcel, Giwa had been accused by a senior member of the Directorate of Military intelligence of “illegally importing and stockpiling arms and ammunition for the purpose of staging a socialist revolution in Nigeria.”
In one of his columns, Giwa had criticized the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) which the government believed would recalibrate the sagging economy.
To assuage Giwa of the trumped up accusation by the government, Colonel Halilu Akilu a top security chief of IBB administration told Giwa not worry of anything. 
Furthermore, Akilu had told Giwa that he should expect a parcel – an invitation- from the Commander-in-Chief for official function.
Sooner than later, a man with a parcel arrived Giwa’s house. The parcel was received by Giwa’s son, Billy. Billy handed the parcel to his father. The parcel “bore the seal of the Presidency, was marked: “To be opened by addressee only.”  Receiving the parcel, Giwa said “this must be from the Presidency.”
Giwa had placed the parcel on his laps while it was being opened. The parcel exploded and torn Giwa into shreds. Giwa’s life expired on the way to the hospital.
Who killed Dele Giwa?
The denial of Giwa’s death by his killer (s) had gathered such velocity and punch to the extent that the rest of us have been rendered helpless and powerless.
Who killed Dele Giwa?
IBB and his henchmen had before the act relentlessly breathed threats and murder against Giwa. IBB the procurer of wickedness and destroyer of our nation is of a deceiving spirit and doctrines of demons full of lies and hypocrisy and with a conscience that has been “seared with a hot iron.”
Who killed Dele Giwa?
“If one person tells you it’s a horse, “goes the adage, “may be it is a horse, but if three people tell you it’s a horse- saddle up!”
Who killed dele Giwa?
The killing is done
Dele Giwa is gone
The harvest is past
The mourning continues.
Saharareporters

Governor Murtala Nyako Subdued By PDP, Ordered To Apologize In Writing

PDP Secretary, Olisa Metuh, Governor Nyako and Olagunsoye Oyinlola at the PDP headquarters today

By SaharaReporters, New York

The National Working Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is considering taking a second look at the dissolution of the executive committee of the party’s Adamawa State after a repentant Governor Murtala Nyako rushed to the party’s headquarters to beg party officials for forgiveness.
Mr. Nyako today arrived at the party headquarters and met with officials of the National Working Committee between 10 a.m. and noon. The meeting was also attended by Women Affairs Minister, Ms. Zainab Maina, and other party officials from Adamawa State.

Speaking with journalists after the meeting, Governor Nyako said that, as the leader of the party in Adamawa State, he expressed regret over actions that led to the dissolution of the state executive committee and pledged to make amends. He maintained that the mistakes arose from pressures of elections this year as well as security and other challenges in the state.
Referring to the National Working Committee as a senior brother who has disciplined a younger one, he described the PDP as a big family that has resolved the issues as a united family.
Two senior party officials who were at the meeting told SaharaReporters that the working committee ordered the governor and members of his circle to put their regrets and apologies in writing before the matter can be fully resolved.
Saharareporters had reported yesterday that PDP national chairman, Bamanga Tukur, had arm-twisted the party’s National Working Committee to sack the party’s executive committee in his home state of Adamawa. Our sources linked Mr. Tukur’s action to the gubernatorial ambition of his son, Anwal Tukur. Our sources disclosed that the PDP chairman was determined to install one of his sons as the next governor of Adamawa State. The chairman’s objective had created tension within the party and caused a political meltdown of the PDP in the state.
“Governor Nyako has realized that power pass power,” said a source who is close to Mr. Tukur, adding that the governor and members of his faction must apologize in writing “or face the music.”

Boko Haram Fingered In Blasphemous Publication: Top Commander Arrested in Senators House

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NewsRescue- An unusual publication in the New Nigerian newspaper with office in Kaduna, contained blasphemous print messages.
Fingers are being pointed at Boko Haram, the radical fanatic terrorist cult that operates out of Borno state as being behind this surprising, provocative publication. “The group is getting more desperate as the law is catching up on them, and the Muslim people and leaders are standing against them, and this is why they are playing dirty games.. they paid the guy to have this published on Friday to cause anger in Muslim youth and maybe rioting….and are hoping this furthers their sectarian strife and destruction goals. The security are on top of them.” An intelligence agent said.
Below is the post on the blasphemous publication, from SaharaReporters:

An article considered to contain ‘blasphemous’ comments about Prophet Muhammad (SWT) allegedly appeared in the New Nigerian newspaper in Kaduna on Tuesday.

The article, which is said to have first appeared online, found its way into the 47 year-old newspaper, which was established by late Premier of Northern Nigeria, Sir Ahmadu Bello only days before his death to protect Northern interests.

A senior security official in Abuja who spoke to SaharaReporters on condition of anonymity, said that the article appeared to have been picked up by the paper for their hard copy version without proper vetting.
The source said that independent investigators have arrived Kaduna, headquarters of the New Nigerian to establish the circumstances that led to the publication of the article.

“Yes our investigators were dispatched from Abuja to Kaduna to independently investigate the issue, and they are on their way back to Abuja and will brief the NSA of the findings,” he said. It is very dangerous and we don’t know what will follow, you remember the THISDAY saga and so on, our fear is [that] it can be manipulated to achieve clandestine interests like it has always been.”

He said our reporter that the comments were first noticed by some readers in Abuja who immediately drew the attention of the security agencies to it.

This development, which is causing tongue-wagging among the Muslim elite in the North, is coming barely a month after several protests that greeted a film also considered offensive by the Muslim world.  Many Nigerian Muslims turned out in thousands to demonstrate against the movie.

A banker in Kaduna confirmed that armed police men have been stationed at the headquarters of the New Nigerian on Ahmadu Bello Way.  A police officer also told our reporter that top editors of the paper who are Muslims were interrogated by police and asked to write statements about how the piece came to appear in their newspaper.

In order to manage the crisis the Sultan of Sokoto and several Islamic clerics have waded into the issue to calm the situation in the restive region.

In other news:

Boko Haram commander arrested in Senators house

Nigerian authorities said Friday they had arrested an alleged high-profile member of Islamist extremist group Boko Haram at the home of a senator in the violence-torn Nigerian city of Maiduguri.
The statement from a military task force in Maiduguri did not name the senator and provided few other details. There have been allegations of links between elements of Boko Haram and local politicians in the past.
“A high-profile Boko Haram commander, one Shuaibu Mohammed Bama, who has been on the list of wanted terrorists … was arrested by task force troops in a serving senator’s house …,” the statement said of the arrest on Thursday.
“He is in the custody of the (task force) and assisting in the investigation and has since made startling revelations.”
In November 2011, Nigerian secret police said they had arrested an alleged Boko Haram spokesman with ties to a member of parliament. The alleged links however appeared to involve local politics in Nigeria’s northeast.
Nigerian authorities frequently exaggerate their efforts in arresting or cracking down on Boko Haram, which has carried out scores of bombings and shootings.

NewsRescue

Resumption Of State Executions In Edo State Condemned By Amnesty International

By SaharaReporters, New York

Death warrants signed by the Governor of Edo State were sharply condemned this week by the rights watchdog Amnesty International, who called it “a deep disrespect for the judicial process” at a time when appeal proceedings for the two convicted men were still underway.
Two prisoners on death row in Benin prison are in now imminent danger of being hanged after the governor signed their death warrants. Unconfirmed reports say the gallows are being made ready for the two men.
The Governor of Edo State signed the execution warrants two weeks ago, after prison authorities informed him that the death row inmates were ‘becoming unmanageable.’ According to the Edo state Attorney General some death row inmates were involved in a recent jailbreak incident in Oko prison.
“Executing detainees as a method of controlling ‘unmanageable’ inmates is totally unacceptable – it is arbitrary and a violation of their right to life,” said Lucy Freeman, Amnesty International’s Deputy Programme Director for Africa. “Instead of executing prisoners, it is about time the Nigerian authorities address underlying problems in the criminal justice system.”
The Edo State Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice Osagie Obayuwana could not confirm when the executions would take place as he indicated the decision would be taken by the state prison authorities. The Governor of Oko prison in Benin city refused to confirm or deny when the executions would take place.
In March 2010, Nigerian NGO, Legal Defence and Advocacy Project filed an appeal on behalf of the then 840 inmates – including the two whose execution warrants were recently signed. An injunction was granted by the court upholding the appeal but it was lifted in April 2012. The organisation filed another appeal in April 2012 following the court's decision and the judgment on that appeal is pending.
The governor also reviewed the cases of four other prisoners. Tejanie Mustapha and one other man have had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment and two others, Calistus Ike and Monday Udo are to be released today.
 According to the Edo state Attorney General, the two prisoners who are to be executed were convicted of murder. Under Nigeria’s penal laws the death penalty is mandatory for murder.
 The last known executions in Nigeria were carried out in 2006, when at least seven men, all sentenced to death in Kano State, were hanged in Kaduna, Jos and Enugu prisons. According to the Office of the Federal Attorney General and Minister of Justice, there is now a moratorium on executions in Nigeria, however, he described the moratorium as ‘voluntary’.
This latest attempt to resume executions follows an announcement by state governors in June 2011 that they would review all cases of death row inmates and sign off executions as a means of decongesting the country’s prisons.
  “The decision to sign a death warrant on these two prisoners shows a deep disrespect for the judicial process as the inmates are part of an ongoing appeal,” Lucy. “The execution of a prisoner when their death sentence is still under challenge in the courts is a flagrant violation of human rights.”

(Sidebar)
Background information:
There are approximately 920 people on death row in Nigeria, including women and juvenile offenders. Many death row inmates were sentenced to death following blatantly unfair trials or after spending more than a decade in prison awaiting trial.
The 2004 National Study Group on Death Penalty and the 2007 Presidential Commission on the
Administration of Justice both stressed that the Nigerian criminal justice system cannot guarantee a fair trial and called for a moratorium on the death penalty.
In 2008 the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Commission) adopted its second resolution on the death penalty, calling on States Parties to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights to “observe a moratorium on the execution of death sentences with a view to abolishing the death penalty” and to ratify the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty. In a study published on 19 April 2012, the Working Group on the Death Penalty of the African Commission reaffirmed the necessity of the abolition of capital punishment and suggested ways for its achievement.
 

“Biafra Republic coming soon,” MASSOB leader, Uwazurike assures Igbos

Leader of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), Chief Ralph Uwazurike, assured the Igbo nation that the actualisation of a sovereign state for the Igbos would come to reality in no distant time.
Uwazurike said this when he and some MASSOB team leaders stormed the the Fr. Joseph High School, where flood victims are currently being camped in parts of Anambra State, on Thursday.
He noted that the rate at which the nation’s peace and security are put under continuous threat, indicates that a new Republic of Biafra is about to emerged in offing.
Uwazuruike while donating materials to those displaced by flood assured his people that the long awaited Biafra Republic was already in sight.
He however promised to relocate them to a more conducive camp like they did for the war disabled veterans.
He said, “I can build permanent camp for the flood victims, as I did for the war veterans, but let me wait for a while and see what the government can do for them”.
The frontline leader also warned that anybody who attempts to divert relief materials donated to them, would be severely dealt with by MASSOB.
Meanwhile, MASSOB has pleaded with the police in Aguleri to release five of its members detained while awaiting the arrival of Uwazurike.
According to the group’s Director of Information of , Mr. Uchanna Madu, the group had not done anything wrong by going to help their brothers who were in need.
DailyPost

Indifferent Middle Class and our Failing Govt

El-Rufai on Friday - Young Voices (4) - Introducing Japheth Omojuwa

I met Japheth Omojuwa on Twitter before we met in person a few months after. He is one of those young Nigerians that are brilliant, courageous and detribalised and express these philosophies passionately using social media. With nearly 40,000 followers on Twitter, Japheth is both a thought leader among his peers, but gives sleepless nights to President Goodluck Jonathan’s media managers. His blogging website www.omojuwa.com is one of the most popular amongst young people.

He writes today on the lackadaisical attitude of our elite focusing on the indifference of our middle class as one of the root causes of our failing government. He believes that unless our middle class rises up, organises and demands decent governance and public accountability, it will be squeezed into joining the ranks of 112 million Nigerians currently in poverty.

It is my honour and privilege to introduce Omojuwa, an alumnus of Kings College, Lagos and graduate of Agricultural Economics of the Federal University of Technology, Abeokuta. He follows the tradition of Yemi Adaomlekun, Auwal Sani Anwar and Elnathan John in writing on a subject of concern to young people. Indifferent Middle Class and our Failing Government - By: Japheth Omojuwa

Every day, Nigeria’s presidency – excluding the vice-president - will have a bazaar-esque table of food and refreshment worth N2,010,000.00 excluding special events. The 2012 budget reserved N951 million for the president’s foreign travels and the president promised to cut on this after the Occupy Nigeria uproar. In keeping to that promise, the president has averaged two travels per month since then but that is nothing compared to the N2.6 billion dedicated to his 2013 foreign travels - N7.1 million for each day of 2013 including weekends. N2.6 billion is the salary of 12,037 Nigerians on the minimum wage working for the whole year.

For a government that says it has transformed our power challenge, one would wonder why they had to budget N72,510,832 to fuel the state house. Aso Rock expects to burn some 1,300 litres of diesel per day based on the pump price. The budget  contains more irresponsible allocation of state resources to political office holders, including National Assembly members who get to spend some N150 billion up from not more than N50 billion from the Olusegun Obasanjo years. It was established in a well-publicised paper how the worth of an average bill passed by the National Assembly is N10 billion! Each legislator costs Nigerians over $2 million per year.

How can this not be criminal in a supposed representative democracy? This sheer irresponsibility and obvious disregard for the people’s yearnings will continue as long as those who should demand at least the application of common sense in the governance of Nigeria decide to keep quiet.

The world over, you’d hardly find any country that ever survived the domination of a few over many without the rise of a people who are neither at the top of the pyramid nor essentially at its bottom, those who find themselves between both ends of the socio-economic divide. You cannot get to any Promised Land worth the travel without getting to cross bridges as we cannot bank on the miracles of going through water.  The bridge of progress and development in any modern nation is the middle class. If a nation stays stagnated or retards in development, check the bridge.

Read tales of the Industrial Revolution, the American Revolution and other mass movements including the several movements across Europe and even more recently with the likes of Rudi Dutschke in Germany and the Arab Spring and you’d find the middle class at the end of it if not at its beginning. This is because this class has the number and the resources to make change happen. Unlike the poor, they have resources to spare for advocacy. The poor live from hand to mouth and are the worst hit in case of any campaign that halts production one way or the other.

That Nigeria needs saving is a foregone conclusion and that there has to be a mass movement that seeks and demands genuine transformational change is a long delayed reality.  Easterly, William, 2001 defined a “middle-class consensus” as a situation of  relative equality and ethnic homogeneity, he went on to show empirically that such a middle-class consensus facilitates higher levels of income and growth, as well as higher levels of public goods. This may sound counter-intuitive especially considering the fact that the finger of blame for our national woes have always been pointed in the direction of those directly involved with governance but we are at fault for the woes of Nigeria because we are too docile and we have come to accept nonsense from our office holders as the norm.

We are the ones that live in homes with generators that have sworn an oath of war with silence. We don’t care if the roads to our houses are passable, we just ensure our second Tokunbo car is an SUV and we never bother about lasting solutions. We create a cocoon around ourselves against the many menaces of our society. We sit at beer parlours and gist about what is wrong with our country without ever really doing anything to be part of change. And now who do we blame for having a president whose policies look more like documents drafted from such beer parlour gatherings? Our government has policies with sounds without meaning, words without power and trillions of naira without value to the people.

Every Nigerian leader has been from the middle class or from an even more wretched background. They get to the top by hook, crook, coup or luck and don’t give a damn if the people die or live. They could care less about the people where two out of three are poor. We can dress all up and go to church giving praises in empty stomachs that may never be filled except we get a chance to attend a church related event after that. We invest in cheap London-America outfits - wash am, press am well, spray perfume and we look good to go. If you are lucky to add a few fats on your cheeks then your money has indeed come. We wallow in poverty and have become so numbed to this abnormality as though we were pigs destined for dirt so would find calm where others find discomfort.

We are progressing and transforming Nigeria. We are progressing on our known path of mediocrity and transforming from a people that though did not have everything, had values and the basic things of life. Where the laws did count, to a country where the lawmakers are the chief lawbreakers, transforming to a land where to steal in a better and more rewarding position you must loot and loot well in your current position.

A minister spends over N2 trillion on what the people agreed N260 billion should be spent on, she could still go ahead to make the laws that make her even more powerful. Every other presidential broadcast results in protests and every presidential broadcast either makes you angry or sad. You are angry about the fact that the Presidency has become the mascot for national intellectual poverty and sad that a nation, in all its glory and human resource endowment has been limited to being led by its dross.

Nigeria is what it is because we are who we are…mostly selfish, short-sighted, parochial and a grab-your-own mentality obsessed group of people who make noise when not positioned to steal, who steal when positioned to do greater good. We have hit rock bottom even though the realities of modern day Nigeria make us feel our current office holders will breach even this bottom and take us further down. God forbid! We can forbid it too.

We need to organise ourselves and start right from our local governments. One person takes up the challenge, gets others together and pays the local government chairman a call. You want to know all there is to know about what s/he has been doing with your money. We cannot just live in patience for the day someone from our family will get the chance to steal.

As bad as that sounds, it is even more statistically impossible compared to if we ensure our country works for us all at the same time. As for those of us who cannot see beyond a need to divide Nigeria, let me state that James Ibori stole Delta people’s money. The people of Oyo State are not looking for the Hausa governor that stole their money and the people of Edo State are not cursing an Igbo man for the development they seemed to have had a divorce with until the Adams Oshiomhole years. The homogeneity of language is essentially a need for us to see beyond our differences as a group and at least get involved.

We must fight to cut down the size of government. This is killing development. Recurrent expenditure has barely changed despite what the statistics intend to tell you. N2.425 trillion in 2011, N2.47 trillion in 2012 and N2.41 trillion for 2013 is not change. Cut this big government and for every cut, we cut down its failures. We need to reduce its obstructive size for a people-driven economy and system. What Nigeria needs is an army of active citizens because activists and CSOs are always going to be limited. What we need is an economy free from cronyism and incessant government control. Are we ready to get involved yet or do we just wait our turn to chop?

ThisDay