My life in danger for renouncing victory – Offa PDP Candidate

Samuel Aruwan

The councillorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Offa, Kwara state, who rejected his purported victory in the August 31, 2013 local government election, yesterday in Kaduna told newsmen that his life is in danger for publicly denying the victory awarded him by the Kwara State Independent Electoral Commission (KWASIEC).

Speaking to newsmen through his lawyer, Mr. Abdulkarim Alabi shortly after receiving a certificate of honour by the Buhari Vanguard, presented to him by General Muhammadu Buhari, said, Mr. Aolabi has been receiving threat messages in respect of his courageous step he took by rejecting the electoral robbery that happened in Offa, Kwara from unknown quarters.”
He said: “I just told you that these threats are coming from strange quarters, but we have reported the matter to security agencies and they assured us that they are working to ensure his security.”

When asked of the present place Afolabi is being kept in view of threats to his life, his lawyer said that owing to security reasons and for his safety, it wa not proper to disclose his present place of residence.
He said: “The most important thing is we are appreciating his courageous decision to have refused taking victory that he knew was not his.”

BluePrint

Tension Between Lagos Civil Society Groups As Associates Of Booed Commissioner Threaten Lawsuit

Kayode Opeifa

A rift appears imminent between several civil society organizations in Lagos State after a group of three activist groups threatened to fight on behalf of Kayode Opeifa, the Lagos State Transportation Commissioner, who was booed out of an event on September 5 commemorating the life and work of the late Gani Fawehinmi.
On Wednesday, the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CDHR), Civil Liberty Organization (CLO) and an unknown National Youth Council of Nigeria held a press conference in Lagos to condemn the embarrassing eviction of Mr. Opeifa from the memorial event to honor Mr. Fawehinmi. The three groups suggested their readiness to pursue punitive action against Mr. Opeifa’s evictors.
Two events, one in the morning, the other in the evening, were held on September 5, 2013 to celebrate Mr. Fawehinmi’s irrepressible legal and social advocacy for the rights of poor people. The morning event was a public lecture while the evening event was a special one to which the organizers had invited, among others, former Petroleum Minister Tam David-West, former Commissioner for Environment in Lagos State, Muiz Banire, and the current local council chairman of Amuwo Odofin Local Government Area, Ayo Adewale.
The Gani Fawehinmi Memorial Organization (GAFAMORG), which organized the event, clarified that the public officials invited to it were associates of the late lawyer and activist. They also explained that Mr. Opeifa, who strayed into the evening segment, came without invitation. He was subsequently jeered and booed and forced to leave after the organizers revealed that he was not a guest.
“Muiz Banire initiated the Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Park in Ojota, and he was an intern at the Gani Fawehinmi Chambers,” said Ayodele Akele, one of the organizers. Mr. Akele also denied the accusation that he invited the chairman of Amuwo Odofin council, Mr. Adewale, for financial reasons. He disclosed that Mr. Fawehinmi mentored the local government boss while he was a students’ leader at the Lagos State University (LASU).
But the three pro-Opeifa groups questioned the exclusion of the Transportation Commissioner, and threatened to ensure that those who evicted him would be punished. A leader in the Lagos State chapter of the CDHR, Mr. Isiak Buna, said the group’s legal unit was weighing the filing of legal action against Mr. Opeifa’s evictors.
A source told SaharaReporters that Mr. Opeifa, who is rumored to be interested in running for the governorship of Lagos State in 2015, had sent one of his aides to survey the venue before he appeared. “We saw one Mr. Nelson, known to be one of his ‘boys’, come to the venue and then leave moments later,” said the source. He added: “Nelson reappeared afterwards with Mr. Opeifa and we could connect the lines.”
Some civil society groups told SaharaReporters that they were not surprised at the action of the pro-Opeifa groups. “Many of the leaders of the three groups are known to be protégés of the commissioner,” said one source. Mr. Opeifa was a chairman of the CDHR in Lagos State before he joined the cabinet of Governor Babatunde Fashola.
“Comrade Kayode Opeifa has a very clear progressive history as an activist lecturer at the Lagos State University and a former Chairman of the Lagos State Chapter of Committee for the Defense of Human Rights,” said the groups sympathetic to him. They added: “He was a friend o [the] late Chief Gani Fawehinmi, [the] late Chima Ubani. He was the only cabinet member in Lagos State that came to bail out the activists when the federal police arrested members of the Joint Action Front, Muhammed Fawehinmi and his mother, Mrs. Ganiat Fawehinmi, during the protest to commemorate the killings of the protesters during the struggle against fuel subsidy withdrawal.”
But other activists in Lagos have condemned the three groups’ hasty defense of Mr. Opeifa. “We shall make our own position known in [a] few days,” a spokesman of one of the Lagos-based groups told Saharareporters.
Another activist accused the three groups of seeking to obtain money from Mr. Opeifa by offering to host a press conference and sue on his behalf. As he was being evicted, Mr. Opeifa had threatened to sue his evictors. “But out of zealousness, the three groups have requested that he allow them to institute the action on his behalf,” one activist lawyer said.  “It is curious that elements in the so called civil society are being so emotional about this when it has to do with a commissioner. If not for their pecuniary motive, why are they crying more than the bereaved?” he asked. He added: “When have they called a [press] conference like this one to address burning issues in Nigeria—education crisis, transportation hassles, deportation and other issues? Are those not human right issues that needed be defended by them? Have they called [press] conferences on those and have they sued Governor Fashola over deportation?”
“It is very good this is happening. It guides us to know those who are genuine from those who are only out to serve their pockets by establishing civil society organizations,” said a student who participated in organizing the September 5 event.
In a curious development, the third pro-Opeifa group, National Youths Council of Nigeria, is reportedly led by one Mr. Gbadebo popularly known as F.I.G., a personal assistant to Mr. Opeifa. An activist alleged that Mr. Opeifa bankrolled the three groups’ press conference through his aide, Mr. Gbadebo, alias F.I.G. The group reportedly sent a deceptive text message to its unit members to attend the press conference, asking each unit to provide N1000 for “mobilization.”
Saharareporters obtained a text message sent out by the CDHR to its members. It read:
“CDHR/CLO holds a press conference to condemn the assault on COMR. KAYODE OPEIFA. Every unit is expected to come with N1000 as mobilization towards the struggle, at CDHR OFFICE, IKEJA on Wednesday 11/09/13 by 9.00 a.m. Tnx Comr. Deji for CDHR.”
“The sms stated that CDHR and CLO planned the conference,” an activist stated. He added: “How Mr. Gbadebo National Youths Council of Nigeria came later into the organizing made it further clear that the whole charade was bankrolled by Opeifa.”

Saharareporters

Militant leaders sign fresh accord on Nigeria’s peace

 by Johnkennedy Uzoma

Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, former security adviser (CSO) to late Head of State, Sani Abacha;  the leader of Niger Delta Volunteer Force (NDVF) Dokobo Asari;  MASSOB leader Ralph Uwazuruike and founder of Odua People’s Congress Dr.

Fredrick Fashaun   have threatened to henceforth expose any personality that would create ugly scenarios in the country  no matter how highly place.
The organizations represented by their leaders cutting across all the geopolitical zones in the country, made the threats after rising from their meeting where certain issues concerning the future of the country were deliberated. They resolved to take drastic stand against anybody irrespective of how influential and wealthy he may be.
The communiqué issued yesterday in Owerri and jointly endorsed by Al-Mustapha, Asari, Uwazuruike, Fashaun and other 23 leaders insisted that they would not allow themselves to be used by anybody to cause disaffection or mayhem amongst innocent citizens in the country.
They maintained that the interest of the nation should at all times supersede any primordial sentiment be it ethnic, religious and regional.

WeeklyTrust

The meaning of African culture, By Gimba Kakanda

Culture is an evolving concept.

Ignorance has always been a variable in interpreting contexts and concepts. We rely on flawed and often hypocritical analyses in defining African culture and dismissing any label we consider as foreign or alien to us.

Backhanded defences of Africa by those who like to think of themselves as conservatives, romanticise obvious inelegant phrases and concepts such as “the beauty of Africa”. To these conservatives, Africa is literally a civilisation of unrefined people dressed in caftan, adire or kampala and living in, perhaps, mud-built huts of various exotic shapes.

In their conservative defences, they pander to obvious contradictions. First, what these African culturalists label fixedly as “African” are a developing or evolving facet of a human civilisation. It’s actually an non-progressive mind that would in this day and age consider riding on donkeys to farm African and not what it really is – backwardness! But among them too, there is a conflict: in their clamour for what qualifies for the African, certain traditions of the foreigners who introduced Abrahamic religions are assimilated. Thus, they betray their touted aversions to influences. The main ignorance here is the inability to tell the Western apart from the Modern. Though the West leads modern civilisation, it’s inaccurate to lay all claim to ownership of this world of machines to it. What we call western civilisation is an evolution of the collective efforts of renowned scientists, explorers, inventors and scholars from different races and continents. The white man, for instance, did not know what paper was until the Chinese invented it.

So I am a child of the modern civilisation, a civilisation that replaced the ink-pot with fountain pen. A civilisation, whose people are a non-progressive collective that cannot manufacture an ordinary car, has automatically lost my membership. Culture is the way we live, which is why anything that eases the way I live must be embraced; which is why I abandon hoes for tractors to feed a larger number of people; and which is why camels and donkeys are abandoned for cars and aeroplanes to make living easy. I wear clothes in the style that the billions of people on earth, having criticised and eventually found practical, endorsed. This is what culture is all about, a continuous intercourse of ideas, concepts and creativities!

My culture is anything that redeems my identity, not the primitive emblems that reduce and mock my intellectual and artistic abilities. I am open to influences that can redeem my humanity. I accept the education introduced by the white man just as I accept the religion introduced to Africa by the Arabs. I accept to learn English Language to ease my academic pursuits in this anglophone entity just as I study Arabic Language to understand my Islamic faith. Doing so, does not mean that I have lost pride in my African being, it does not mean that I have lost my pride in being a black man, it just means that they are valuable for assimilating the evolving culture. It doesn’t make Englishmen and Arabs more important than the black race. It doesn’t make English and Arabic more important than my mother-tongue. Our culture is now defined by all the things we domesticated from the zoos of alien creations!

It is, however, unfortunate to see heavily influenced Africans screaming, “This is not African!” in a market-square of foreign concepts. You lack the moral rights to decide what is or is not African unless you renounce your “foreign” religion-channelled worldviews.

The other day a non-Muslim friend of mine saw a Muslim lady dressed in hijab, and asked to know why she would be so dressed in that hot afternoon. Ironically, he was a clear definition of what puzzled him, being also dressed in three-piece suit which was way thicker!

“Why are you dressed in suit in this heat?” I asked. “I’m just returning from the office!” he said. I replied, “You wear yours in fear of your boss, she wears hers in fear of her God. And she has her brains to choose a culture or life that comforts her.”

The worse contradictions were the reactions of some Igbo Christians to the recent conversion of an Igbo monarch to Islam, which to them was against the culture of the Igbo – when did Christianity become the culture of the Igbo? Amadioha must not hear this!

Civilisation is not built by our nostalgia and histories alone, but in our criticisms of identified drawbacks and letting go of them. Modern African culture must not be a romanticisation of the simply old and dated. Certain things are more useful in museums and history books. The irony is that even our fabrics, which we wear like testimonials of accomplishments to international events or foreign trips, were either produced in the countries – or with machines manufactured in the countries – we seek to intimidate with what we mistake for our inventions. The last time I checked, even what we refer to as African wax was actually started in Indonesia by English and Dutch merchants. May God save us from us!

PremiumTimes

2015: PDP will lose without breakaway Governors – Tambuwal

By Ameh Comrade Godwin

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal had on Friday admitted that it would be difficult for the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to win the 2015 general elections without the seven state governors who broke away from the party during its mini-convention in Abuja last month.

Tambuwal in an address entitled “Leadership in Developing Democracies: A Nigerian Perspective”, which he delivered at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC, said that some Niger Delta militants who had been threatening bloodshed in the country if President Goodluck Jonathan loses out in 2015 presidential election were being politically motivated by some top politicians in government.

He also said, “Definitely what happened on that convention day is going to influence the turn of events in 2015, especially if the PDP is not able to manage its internal crisis and return those seven governors to the main fold of the party. The challenges that the PDP faces now is how the leadership of Bamanga Tukur will address the points being raised by the aggrieved governors. The agitation is that the leadership of the PDP should allow freedom and aspirations to come out freely so that those that feel strong for some particular positions should be allowed to contest without being hindered.

“So, it is up to the group that is led by Bamanga Tukur to appreciate the implication and the consequence of that action that was taken by the faction that broke away from the party at the mini convention. Tukur must understand what the action of those seven governors will cost the PDP before the 2015 elections, and failure to do that; I am afraid… and if we allow that particular group, from what we can see, either to go and form another political party since they are working together or go and join the merger and possibly increase the strength of the newly formed All Progressives Congress (APC), the PDP being led by Bamanga Tukur will have a very strong formidable force coming up against it in 2015.”

Tambuwal continued, “The challenge for the Tukur-led PDP is to go and find every means to pacify and bring the seven governors and their people back into the main PDP fold because if you lose just one state, it can be very costly not to talk of seven states, and of those seven, there is Kano that is having a very strong voting population in Nigeria; there is Rivers, and there is also Niger State. They are not states like Nassarawa, Ebonyi or Bayelsa. These seven states are the ones that have significant voting strength and I believe that PDP needs to be more careful in handling this very delicate situation.”

He told the audience that it had been one problem after the other in the PDP since Tukur came into office as the party’s national chairman. “First, he started with Adamawa, his home state, and it is clear that it was because he is having his own son in mind to succeed the present governor of the state. Same is happening in some of the states where some of his allies are having interests in who becomes the next governors.”

Tambuwal explained that apart from governors Rotimi Amaechi, Babangida Aliyu, Sule Lamido, Murtala Nyako, Rabiu Kwakwanso, Abdulfatah Ahmed and Aliyu Wammako who broke away from the ruling party, other governors are uncomfortable with the leadership style of Tukur.

On the Boko Haram menace, the speaker said, “We are doing everything humanly possible to address the insurgence before the next election. We have mapped out strategies on how to combat terrorism. Before 2015, we should be able to have enough degree of peace in the North-East for us to be able to conduct elections in the area. That is why the government had to declare a state of emergency, and from the reports we have been receiving, the problem of terrorism is going down in the area.”

DailyPost

Lamido receives Ruqayyatu, thanks Jonathan

 by Abdullahi Anako and Abdulkadir Badsha Mukta

Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State yesterday thanked President Goodluck Jonathan for giving Jigawa two ministerial slots in the whole of the north and for appointing Professor Ruqayya Ahmed Rufai as the first female Mister of Education in Nigeria.

Lamido, who organized a reception for the former Education Minister at the Aminu Kano triangle in Dutse, said Jigawa people are grateful to President   Jonathan for the period given to Prof. Ruqayya to serve.
“We are here to receive Professor Ruqayya Ahmad Rufai, a worthy ambassador of Jigawa State who has served this country meritoriously. We are also here to thank President Goodluck Jonathan, a dear friend, brother, our political leader for appointing her a minister. We have no ill fillings, no grudges or anger over her removal. The President has not done any wrong by firing her and there is no political dimension to the sack contrary to popular opinion.”
Prof. Ruqayya thanked Almighty Allah who sustained and protected her throughout her tenure as minister. She also thanked Governor Sule Lamido for the confidence reposed in her and nominated her for ministerial appointment.
She also expressed her gratitude to President   Jonathan for the support and cooperation she said she received from during her tenure.

WeeklyTrust

I almost rigged your election in 2003 – Obasanjo tells Governor Shekarau

Former President, Olusegun Obasanjo on Monday confessed that he was almost forced to rig the election that brought Governor Ibrahim Shekarau of Kano into power in 2003.

The erstwhile president while speaking in Abuja yesterday where he chaired a session of a round-table on Party Politics organized by the National Institute for Legislative Studies, said he refused to succumb the pressure he faced from oppositions despite the fact that Shekarau won the election with a very narrow margin.

Obasabjo said: “I want to thank former Governor Shekarau for what happened to him in Kano. What he did not know, which he may want to know today, is that he won that election with a very narrow margin, and if I had yielded to pressure, that narrow margin would have been changed. He didn’t know that somebody wanted me to talk to the electoral body, but I refused to do so.”

In a swift reaction, Shekarau accused Obasanjo of presenting completely different picture of what happened in 2003 ‘in a bid to score cheap credit.’

The presidential candidate in 2011 election on the platform of All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP), who spoke through his former Director of Press Sule Ya’u Sule, claimed that it was the former BOT chairman of PDP who was forcing the state’s returning officer to announce PDP candidate as the winner.

Shekarau alleged that reliable sources told him that Obasanjo was personally on the neck of the INEC official, trying to rig the election.

Obasanjo identified indiscipline, lack of service delivery and non-adherence to manifestos as the bane of party politics in the country, noting that “no human institution will endure for long without discipline.

Earlier at the event, Shekarau preached against do-or-die affair and knocked Obasanjo for once saying he (Shekarau) was in a wrong party.

“Chief Obasanjo once said I belong to the wrong party, and I think he probably didn’t want to say it here and that was why today he said I belong to the other side,” he said.