My husband’ll win presidential election – Buhari’s wife

  

  

FROM DESMOND MGBOH,
The wife of the Presidential can­didate of the All Progressives Con­gress (APC), Hajia Aisha Buhari has declared that her husband, General Muhammadu Buhari and his party, APC would win the March 28 elections.
Aisha Buhari spoke yester­day, at the Government House in Kano, during her town hall meeting organised for her to meet with women groups and representatives from Kano, Jigawa and Katsina states.
She hinged the prospects of the success of their party at the presidential poll on the huge support her husband was receiving from all over the country, including the support of women in Nigeria.
According to her, the peo­ple of the Northern region were being looked down upon as Almajiris, and charged them to see the forthcoming election as a challenge, and thereby come out en masse to vote the APC to victory.
Although she admitted that General Buhari might be old, but insisted that health wise, he was very fit to lead the country.
She pledged that the APC and her husband would fulfill all the promises made to the Nigerian people in the course of the campaign, when eventu­ally they come to power.
Buhari’s wife advocated more freedom for women in the North so that they would be able to engage themselves in productive enterprises like their counterparts in the Southern part of the country.
She commended the Kano State Government, under the leadership of Engineer Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso for its giant developmental strides, partic­ularly in the area of improving

Obama to Nigeria: reject calls for violence

 Ahead of this weekend general elections, United States President Barack Obama has urged Nigerians to reject calls for violence during and after the elections.
 Obama in his message to Nigerians also reminded Nigerians that violence has no place in democratic process.
 He therefore charged political leaders and candidates not to incite, support or engage in any kind of violence—before, during, or after the votes are counted.
 The message which was made available to Diplomatic Correspondents in Abuja reads: “I call on all Nigerians to peacefully express your views and to reject the voices of those who call for violence. And when elections are free and fair, it is the responsibility of all citizens to help keep the peace, no matter who wins.
“Successful elections and democratic progress will help Nigeria meet the urgent challenges you face today. Boko Haram—a brutal terrorist group that kills innocent men, women and children—must be stopped. Hundreds of kidnapped children deserve to be returned to their families. Nigerians who have been forced to flee deserve to return to their homes. Boko Haram wants to destroy Nigeria and all that you have worked to build. By casting your ballot, you can help secure your nation’s progress.
“Nigeria is a great nation and you can be proud of the progress you’ve made. Together, you won your independence, emerged from military rule, and strengthened democratic institutions. You’ve strived to overcome division and to turn Nigeria’s diversity into a source of strength. You’ve worked hard to improve the lives of your families and to build the largest economy in Africa.
“Now you have a historic opportunity to help write the next chapter of Nigeria’s progress—by voting in the upcoming elections. For elections to be credible, they must be free, fair and peaceful. All Nigerians must be able to cast their votes without intimidation or fear.
“So I call on all leaders and candidates to make it clear to their supporters that violence has no place in democratic elections—and that they will not incite, support or engage in any kind of violence—before, during, or after the votes are counted. I call on all Nigerians to peacefully express your views and to reject the voices of those who call for violence. And when elections are free and fair, it is the responsibility of all citizens to help keep the peace, no matter who wins.
“I’m told that there is a saying in your country: “to keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done.” Today, I urge all Nigerians—from all religions, all ethnic groups, and all regions—to come together and keep Nigeria one. And in this task of advancing the security, prosperity, and human rights of all Nigerians, you will continue to have a friend and partner in the United States of America.”

WHO IS RICHARD GRENELL?

Ex American Envoy Richard Grenell has said electing Buhari as President of Nigeria will be a disaster for Africa because of Buhari's sharia credentials according to him.
 The PDP press has been agog with this news since it came out on March 19.
 In their desperation to discredit Buhari, Jonathan and PDP will go to any depth to use even the lowliest of persons to attempt to achieve their objective.
 Who is Richard Grenell? According to Wikepedia, Richard Grenell (born September 18, 1966) is an American media commentator and former diplomat. He is the longest serving U.S. Spokesman at the United Nations and briefly served as national security spokesman for Mitt Romney in his 2012 campaign for president of the United States. HE BECAME THE FIRST OPENLY GAY SPOKESMAN FOR A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, after being hired by Mitt Romney. He resigned after pressure from social conservatives and gay liberals alike.
 The PDP that has accused Buhari of going abroad to say he will repeal the anti-gay law has now hired a gay consultant to attack Buhari. So Jonathan has set another record, HE IS THE FIRST NIGERIAN PRESIDENT TO HIRE A GAY CONSULTANT to promote his campaign.
 Richard Grenell lives in California with his partner of nine years, Matthew Lashey, a media and entertainment company executive. This gay man "married" to another man is the PDP consultant telling NIGERIANS not to vote Buhari because he is pro-sharia. I dey laff o!!
 Having hired a gay man, we await the lesbian adviser of President Jonathan! For all we care they can hire Lucifer to threaten fire and brimstone against NIGERIANS. We will still vote Buhari. PDP and Jonathan have lost this battle. Sai Buhari/Osinbajo.

Who Is Afraid of Card Readers?

 TELL MAGAZINE.

By Debo Adeniran
The forthcoming 2015 general elections have recently been throwing up series of interesting scenario which, by all estimation, marks it the most controversial, most contentious and in fact, the most chaotic in the history of electioneering in this country so far.
The two prominent gladiators i.e. the ruling Peoples Democratic Party and the opposition All Progressives Congress have since been at each other’s jugular, trading accusations and brickbats.
Party campaigns, which should have been an issue-based exercise, have so far been reduced to mere mud-slinging, brickbats, name-calling, hate campaigns, innuendoes and in many cases, outright blackmailing. However, we cannot but allow all these to go on, on the excuse that, as some are quick to remind us, ours is still a nascent democracy. “We are still growing; we shall certainly get there someday.”
Granted that our over 50 years democratic experience is still considered young and that mistakes made are meant to serve as tools for getting better as we advance towards perfection, we cannot however help asking the question:  can we ever get any better in the face of apparent retrogression in our attitudes generally especially with the way we operate under our own peculiar, but absurd form of democracy? One would naturally have expected that an over 50-year-old person should be able to display some appreciable degree of maturity but when such a person now behaves like a toddler, something fundamentally nay pathologically is wrong and as such, a major, comprehensive surgical operation, cannot be substituted.
Excuse-makers, for series of abnormalities displayed by the major players in our political turf, are always quick to remind us of how the likes of the United States of America have had to grow steadily through decades and centuries before getting to where they are today. But the basic question these excuse-makers should have to provide answers to is; could America have been able to get to this enviable stage today if it had been a case of one-step-forward, five-steps-backward, as is seemed to be the case with Nigeria? Can growth be synonymous with retrogression?
Well, it is generally agreed that the very foundational bane of our society, has always been the issue of poor leadership. This being the case therefore, the only option left for Nigerians to effect the desired change is no other than to elect leaders of their choice and this could only be made possible through a free, fair and credible election.
Professor Attahiru Jega, chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, today, has had, placed squarely on his shoulders, that onerous task of organizing elections that would be acceptable to Nigerians in particular and the international community that has expressed so much interest in what becomes of the world’s largest black nation as it files out to choose its leaders for the next four years.
Since making public his Commission’s time-table for the election, the afore-mentioned two leading gladiators have been having one issue after the other to contend with. Most pronounced of these contentious issues have centered on the appropriateness or otherwise of amendment in the set time-table, allegation of lopsidedness in the distribution method of the PVCs by INEC, the competence of the INEC as presently composed particularly Jega, the Chairman, as a section of agitators, mainly from the ruling party, the PDP, now calls for his removal and substitution ahead of the elections and most recently the issue of the appropriateness or otherwise of the use of the car reader in the process of voting at the polls.

Dissecting GEJ's Fraudulent Gospel of Continuity.

By Bunmi Awoyemi

 Some people are shouting continuity and am wondering if GEJ has achieved anything positive that makes him deserve another 4 years. Is the stock market better off today than it was 5 years ago? Is the exchange rate of the naira to the dollar better today than it was 5 years ago? Are interest rates offered by the banks in the money market today better than they were 5 years ago? Do we have a more robust excess crude account today than we had 5 years ago? Do we have a more robust foreign reserve than we had 5 years ago? Is the rate of unemployment today not worse than it was 5 years ago? Is the rate of insecurity and insurgency better than it was 5 years ago? Is the health care system better today than it was 4 years ago? Does the government of GEJ have better industrial relations today than previous governments before it? Has there been an improvement in the rate of students who pass WAEC and NECO today than it was 5 years ago? Do we have a more qualitative public tertiary educational system in Nigeria today compared to 5 years ago? I am not talking about a quantitative improvement in public tertiary education. I am taking about improvement in the quality of tertiary education. The list of things to consider is endless. So, is GEJ saying that we should let him repeat the class because he failed woefully by scoring Fs in all areas of the economy? What is this gospel of continuity all about? By Bunmi Awoyemi.

American Delegates And Nigerian Intelligence Clash.

American Delegates And Nigerian Intelligence Clash
Ajomole Helen,
 


An argument ensued on Wednesday at a special briefing in Washington DC when members of an American pre-election mission disputed claims by two Nigerian security chiefs that their delegation endorsed the postponement of the elections.
American Delegates And Nigerian Intelligence Clash
Giving updates on preparations for the re-scheduled elections, Ambassador Ayodele Oke, the director general of the National Intelligence Agency, and Rear-Admiral Gabriel E. Okoi, the director of Defence Intelligence, said the Nigerian government has overcome most of the security and logistic problems that led to the postponement of the elections.


Mr. Oke said the election delay was occasioned by incidences of criminal violence, widespread tension and Boko Haram insurgency, which were occurring in tandem with a considerable shortfall in the electoral calendar.
“INEC was having challenges with regards to the distribution of permanent voter cards (PVCs)”, he said, “While another important tool, the card reader machine were not fully yet tested and deployed (across the country).”
Speaking on the insurgency, Mr. Okoi confirmed that Boko Haram effectively controlled 14 local government areas in the run-up to February 14, the day elections were scheduled to commence.
The terrorists’ threat virtually prevented any form of electoral activity in the occupied areas, the intelligence chiefs said.
“Consequently INEC, after robust consultation with key stakeholders, deferred the elections by six weeks in accordance with constitutional provisions.”
 


Re-emphasizing the gravity of the conditions that led to the decision to postpone the elections, Mr. Oke said that “when the election was postponed, the NDI and IRI who are both on the ground issued a joint statement which corroborated and gave fuller explanation as to the reason why INEC took the decision it took,” adding that the statement is on their website.
But speaking after the security chiefs’ presentations, representatives of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI), who were present at the event, took exception to the Nigerian officials’ representation of their statement.
The former US assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Ambassador George Moose, said “nothing in the statement justified postponement”.
Moose led the eight-person joint pre-election assessment mission that visited Nigeria from January 15-20, this year.
He said while the delegation’s statement recounted the prevailing conditions of the electoral process and specific challenges to the polls, it did not recommend any change to the electoral calendar.


On the contrary, the delegation expressed “concern that postponement would increase post-election risks”. Other members of the NDI, IRI delegation spoke in the same vein.
In another diplomatic scandal, President Goodluck Jonathan has admitted that he never spoke with the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, via telephone, as claimed last week by Nigeria’s foreign affairs ministry.

The Victim President.

The victim president
 By Sam Omatseye 14/11/2011.
 It is not easy to defend Goodluck Jonathan. Even when he enjoys apparent advantage, he commits what tennis fans call unforced errors. He is the yanga that wakes up trouble.
 When I draped him in serpentine prose and called him His Excellency the Snake, readers’ reactions were mixed. Some said it was a felicitous metaphor, hitting the bull’s eye. But a few others endorsed the point while asking for milder animal metaphor. If the man said he was no lion, and no tiger, and one needed an appropriate animal metaphor, the sly ways of the serpent fit like a slough.
 Last week, I felt vindicated. When the shadowy religious group known as Boko Haram struck again and took down over a hundred lives, his reaction upset good conscience because of its cowardice. Rather than take responsibility, he acted the victim. He evinced the quality of the coward. He said most of the countries in the world were assailed with terrorists, so it was excusable.
 Not long after, the United States issued a warning over three hotels in Abuja as targets of terror. They included the Transcorp Hilton, the Sheraton and Nicon Luxury, which are frequented by the foreigners, including Americans, and well-heeled Nigerians.
 Rather than show gratitude, his government lashed out at the publication of the warning. They should have warned them in private, they insisted. It became obvious that the United States had shared information with them before in private and they probably pooh-poohed it. That was why the Federal Government said it was nothing new. If it was nothing new, why did they not respond when it was new, when they first received the intelligence? The Americans obviously did not want to play poker with the lives of their citizens. If the Nigerian government recoiled from action, they did not. What is wrong with making such augury public anyway? They learned from the United Nations building tragedy.
 The purpose of intelligence is not to make it secret. That would be intelligence for intelligence sake. The purpose is to save lives and hound down the culprits. In the United States, once there is an inkling of an attack, the public is alerted with a view to co-opting the cooperation of the civil society since security is a collective endeavour.
 But Jonathan’s men acted like Jonathan. They pushed the blame elsewhere, and wanted to smear the Americans as if there was a great breach of diplomatic behaviour for exposing the incompetence of Nigeria’s intelligence officers.
 Jonathan wanted to act the victim. It was not his fault, he went on; blame the hoodlums. Is that how the commander-in-chief should respond to such a matter? I forget that he claims he is not a general even though he is a commander in chief. Talk about farce!
 He has a police chief called Hafiz Ringim whose men reportedly mix with the Boko Haram folks, yet no helpful arrest has happened. How can Ringim handle this when he could not save his convoy from the infiltration and bombing by the group? It is obvious we have an incompetent police chief. Jonathan deployed soldiers all over the place. They went to war without intelligence. War without knowledge is a waste of brawn and calories. A day after a report that arms were recovered from day-to-day searches in Borno State, the sect struck. It made the security services look absurd, like jokers in a grand scale. We have an incompetent secret service.
 Jonathan has done nothing to ask from them a grand idea and strategy for dealing with the problem. How can he find that grand idea? He does not think grandly. No one can pick one grand idea he has espoused since he took over the country over a year ago. A coward has no bold ideas. A snake is one of the cowardly animals. It does not think big or strike far. It strikes as though it has not stricken. You feel the bite but you don’t see the assailant.
 That is what Jonathan is trying to do, and we see this everywhere including in the handling of the PDP governorship screening in his home state of Bayelsa. It is all about the process. The governor was cleared by the only legal body with the power to do so. This was made clear by the lawmakers from the state. Even if the National Working Committee is to clear the group legally, it has turned what is a simple process into an abracadabra. Why can’t they clear Governor Sylva? If they have a reason, why can’t they come out with the reason?
 The president has received several groups, including the governors, and he says he is not involved and only the leadership of the party should handle this. Who is the leader of the party? In a democracy, once a party produces a president, he or she is the party leader. Can Jonathan say the NWC is not reporting to him? He should stop kidding us. That again is the quality of the snake, striking furtively, in the dark. Finally they disqualified him out of frustration from Saturday’s mammoth rally. They could not even wait till Monday. They did it on a Sunday as though it were an emergency.
 Look at the issue of oil subsidy, and you see President Goodluck Jonathan playing the victim again. Those who oppose him want to derail his government, topple him and bring him down. Would that also include the majority of Nigerians who do not want it? That would mean he understands that he is unpopular. He wanted to place the blame on somebody else. There was nothing wrong with subsidy, he wanted us to believe. It was just the case of some subversives who want him out, he Mr. Goodluck, the man with the most magical meteoric rise in the firmament of Nigeria’s political history. He went as far as to lie in the name of Muhammadu Buhari, saying the former general and rival in the presidential race wanted the removal of the so-called subsidy.
 Buhari responded promptly through his spokesman, Yinka Odumakin, and showed that Jonathan had again committed an unforced error. He wanted to hide under Buhari like a green snake in a shrubbery. But it did not work. Odumakin explained that Buhari only questioned the mathematics of the so-called oil subsidy claims, propounding questions such as how much do we produce and sell the oil per litre abroad, why endless demurrage charges, why round tripping, etc. How did questioning the logic become an endorsement?
 How do these legitimate acts of opposition amount to trying to topple his government? President Jonathan’s only antidote to such relentless pounding is performance. He has not put together any blueprint against terror. No silver bullet for power or for the economy. He pitches the removal of oil subsidy as a source of funds for infrastructure. Then he unveils a contract to build toll gates all over the country. Is he going to charge us for fuel and then for traveling in order to build roads? Haba!
 But the tragedy of Jonathan’s show of victimhood is that he is so Nigerian. Most Nigerians want to blame somebody else for their woes. If it is not their in-laws, it is their enemy in the village or the neighbour’s wife or the other ethnic group or the pagan, Christian or Muslim heretic. Jean Paul Sartre probably had Nigerians in mind when he quipped: “Hell is other people.”
If Jonathan embodies this flipside of the Nigerian character, how can he be transformational? He has not risen above the nether parts of the crowd. Herbert Spencer wrote about a cadre of leaders: “Before he can remake his society, the society must first make him.” The flipside of Nigeria made Jonathan, so how can he remake Nigeria? How can he be transformational?
 Transformational leaders rise above the times. Jonathan should.