Why Zuma won’t be arrested now – South Africa Police

Agency Report South Africa’s police say they will not make any move to arrest ex-president Jacob Zuma, who has been handed a 15-month jail term for contempt until he has fully exhausted his legal battle against the sentence, a document showed Tuesday. Zuma has mounted a two-pronged last-ditch attempt to avoid jail after the Constitutional Court, the country’s top judicial authority, slapped him with the sentence last week. He was told to turn himself in by midnight on Sunday, failing which police would be instructed to arrest him within the following three days. On Friday, Zuma, 79, rushed to court seeking to halt the execution of the arrest order. His application is due to be heard on Tuesday in the Pietermaritzburg High Court. He has separately pleaded with the Constitutional Court to reconsider and rescind its jail order. That challenge will be heard on July 12 In a letter seen on Tuesday, lawyers for the police have written to Constitutional Court saying they will pause on the order to arrest Zuma given the “unique situation presented by the developments and the legal matrix involved.” “Out of respect (for) the unfolding litigation processes, (the police will) hold further actions they are expected to take in terms of the honourable court’s orders in abeyance, pending the finalisation of the litigation,” the letter says. Zuma was ordered to be jailed for disobeying a court order to appear before a commission probing massive state corruption under his nine-year tenure. – ‘No one wants jail’ – In a show of solidarity, hundreds of maskless supporters have descended on his rural home in Nkandla, in southeastern Kwa-Zulu Natal province, in blatant violation of Covid-19 restrictions that have banned gatherings. On Sunday Zuma defiantly declared he was prepared to go to prison, even though “sending me to jail during the height of a pandemic, at my age, is the same as sentencing me to death.” A former fighter against white-minority government in South Africa who spent 10 years in prison Robben Island, Zuma comparing the country’s’ judiciary to “apartheid-type rule”. “I am facing a long detention without trial,” he said. The Zuma case has fuelled tensions within the ruling African National Congress (ANC), where the former president still commands much support among the grassroots. The ANC on Monday condemned the crowds gathering in Nkandla but said it understood why Zuma was exploring every possible channel. “No one wants to go to jail… I think that (ex-) president Zuma is exploring every legal avenue that is available to reduce or to remove the custodial sentence that has been put on him,” said its deputy secretary-general, Jesse Duarte. “In the view of the ANC, we respect the rule of law, we believe that the judiciary must be left to make its own decisions,” she told reporters following a special meeting of the ANC’s National Executive Committee on Monday. “We would hope that comrade Zuma’s court application will be successful,” she added. AFP

Sunday Igboho is a militant who conducts acts of terror – Garba Shehu by Kayode Oyero

Presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, says embattled Yoruba activist, Sunday Adeyemo aka Sunday Igboho is a militant who conducts acts of terror. Shehu further praised the Department of State Services on the raid of the Ibadan residence of Igboho last Thursday. Thirteen of Igboho’s associates were arrested and two killed during the midnight raid which Igboho escaped. The secret police had since declared him wanted for allegedly stockpiling arms but the Yoruba nation activist denied the allegation. Shehu, on Tuesday, in a statement titled, ‘Presidency Statement On The Recent Successes Of Security And Intelligence Agencies’ said the regime won’t condone any act by secessionists. He said, “In furtherance of continued diligent work, the State Security Service on Thursday, 1st July raided the residence of a militant ethnic Secessionist, who has also been conducting acts of terror and disturbing the peace under the guise of protecting fellow “kinsmen”. “His (Igboho) seditious utterances and antics, which he is known to have publicly expressed, have overtime morphed into very hateful and vile laden speeches. It must be highlighted that the government respects fundamental rights of citizens to express their views and recognizes this as a democratic tenet. However, any attempt to build an Armoury coupled with plans either subtle or expressed to undermine our unity as a nation will not be condoned. “Mr. President’s directives to Security Services regarding anyone seen to be carrying arms, particularly AK-47 are clear and require no further illumination. Assault weapons are not tools of peace loving people and as such, regardless of who they are and where they are from, the Security Agencies should treat them all the same. “The successes of our Security Agencies must be commended as they have demonstrated significant deftness, guile and secrecy in carrying out these missions. This level of professionalism must be sustained and brought to bear as we focus on extracting from our society those who have found a new trade in targeting students, rural dwellers and our citizens in the North-West. The nation recognizes their efforts and sacrifice.”

My party members are Nigerians battling hunger, unemployment, poverty – Obasanjo Daud Olatunji

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Monday said he had no plan to float any political party in the future. Obasanjo who was in Kabul in Afghanistan, as a guest of President Ashraf Ghani, accused some unnamed persons of planning to drag his name in the mud. Obasanjo, who was reacting to a report that he had picked three ex-govs as coordinators of a new party,’ described it as a fabrication. The former president in a statement on Monday by his Special Assistant on Media Affairs, Kehinde Akinyemi, said he was not shocked by the report. The statement reads partly, “He said that the fabricated story hardly comes as a surprise because he has, for some time now, observed with bewilderment the efforts by some people to drag him into their political games. “Upon hearing of this latest fabricated report, Chief Obasanjo said, “In my part of the world, when you say goodnight in a place, you do not go back there and say good evening. The one who reported that may need to visit Yaba left (a psychiatrist hospital) . And those who believe it can believe that their mothers are men. “I’m done with partisan politics but by my position in Nigeria and in Africa and without being immodest; and indeed in the world, my door must be opened and it is open to any individual or group of individuals who want to seek my opinion, view or advice on any issue or matter and I will respond to the best of my ability, without being part of that individual or group. “If anything, Chief Obasanjo’s political party today is the party of Nigerians facing insecurity, unemployment, hunger, poverty, and various other challenging issues. It is the party of Nigeria which must be saved, kept wholesomely united in peace, security, equity, development and progress.” PUNCH.

PRESIDENT BUHARI CHARGES SECURITY AGENCIES TO INTENSIFY EFFORTS FOR EARLY RELEASE OF KIDNAPPED STUDENTS

President Muhammadu Buhari Monday directed the military, police and intelligence agencies to ensure safe and early release of all kidnapped victims, expressing concern over attacks on Kaduna and Niger States, largely targeted at students. While noting ongoing deployment of additional security personnel to all troubled areas, the President urged security outfits to “act swiftly” to rescue all school boys and girls in the affected states and ensure safe return. President Buhari said the disturbing incidents of kidnapping students, mostly in Northern states, was already threatening to undermine efforts in boosting school enrolments in states that were adjudged educationally backward. He called on state governments to ensure compliance with UN-supported Safe Schools Programme, which the administration had adopted. The President described kidnapping as cowardly and despicable, condemning it as an assault on affected families and the nation. Garba Shehu Special Adviser to the President (Media & Publicity) July 5, 2021

ADAMU ADAMU TAKES A SWIPE AT PROF. WOLE SOYINKA

Written by Adamu Adamu. Professor Wole Soyinka, who appears totally ignorant of the most burning issue in international current affairs, betrays an unacceptable level of illiteracy on a related issue at home. On the issue of culpability for the origin of Boko Haram, Mahmud Jega says of Soyinka that he thinks he knows; Sam Nda-Isaiah says he doesn’t, and is hopelessly dead wrong; Mohammed Haruna says he only peddles pure rubbish. All the three are right, but the truth really is that he doesn’t even understand—and probably never will. This is because the tunnel vision with which he sees the country has been conditioned by three factors—an unfounded cultural superiority complex, a hubristic pagan worldview and an experience in which he saw the man died. The issue of Boko Haram merely gave him another opportunity to take on his imagined old adversary—the Northern Establishment, which he now holds responsible for the creation of Boko Haram. This is simplistic and laughable; but it saves this unready analyst the trouble of having to know the background to the situation, engage in serious analysis of the issues involved, draw the necessary conclusions and find a way forward for society. Certainly, a knowledge of the varieties of groups on the Islamic revival scene, which no one on the international scene should today be without, the fact that Boko Haram predated the Jonathan administration, and is confined to a corner of the country that is held by one of the opposition parties, and is opposed to all constituted authority including that to be wielded by the Northern leaders that were supposed to have founded it, would make Soyinka’s simplistic explanation all too obvious—and it might have been made to draw attention away from suspected US involvement. No doubt, Soyinka suffers from tribal hubris of which he needs to be cured. Going by the themes of his literary output, he seems to believe that his race is the greatest and the most cultured—and therefore, by implication, his pronouncements must be the best and the final word the world is waiting for. But what is this Yoruba culture in which people like Soyinka take so much pride? No doubt, his people love their language and love singing in it; they love their bodies and love waltzing them into a variety of dance forms. They love their lives and are always impulsively proud to say that they love the culture that has come to define the way they see themselves and view others. However, what Soyinka holds aloft is not culture: it is paganism; though it must be admitted that it is quite elaborate. But the possession of a pagan past is no accomplishment; it is a fact of history and every tribe has had one; and after the advent of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, there is nothing more to glory in animistic heathenism: it is there at the centre and origin of every type of primitiveness. The issue therefore should not be the promotion of the pagan culture of a distant past, but the cultivation of culturedness in present conduct. The proof and relevance of culture should be in its attitudinal pudding, measured by its practical moral utility in setting the standard of what is acceptable in human conduct; and not in the elaborateness of ancient idolatrous rituals. For us, it represented the sub-humanness of our primordial cultural history; and we are not proud of it, and nor are we any more captivated by its elaborateness or by the depth of meaning and the symbolism of its meta-paganism. Of course that is not to say that cultural mores are without meaning. Not at all. They may often in fact be too pregnant with a variety of meanings capable of interpretations; but their import is for a world that is past and gone—and better forgotten. Man’s cultural and social development have today passed the ignorance and obscurantism that paganism has to offer and the superficialities of the animus of those whose antipathy to divine values today finds expression in the cultivation and promotion of this new international pagan culture. But there is no superiority in paganism: there was nothing in Yoruba native forest theology that was more diabolical than the heathenism of the Savannah, where, in the Benue valley, there is magic that is blacker than Sanponno; and in Niger valley, a Satanism that is darker than Esu’s; and among the Maguzawa there are totems that, though benign, are no less occultist. The rituals of Tsumburbura were every inch as complex and elaborate as the possessed incantations of Ogun or the thunders of Sango, and no less diabolical. The Satanology of Santolo would beat every mumbo jumbo of Ifa Orisa divinations. The rites of Mai Barhaza would any day be more picturesque than the dance of the Egungun masquerade; and Babule and Dan Galadima more demonic than Ogboni totemism, and of women just as chauvinistic. In lasciviousness and pure voluptuary the Gelede Festival pales in comparison to the Dala Dance of unclothedness. In number, in hideousness of Satanism and in the comprehensiveness of misguidance Obatala’s 4,000-odd Orisas would prove no match for the fetishism and atheistic devilry of the numberless Iskoki of pre-Islamic Bahaushe. Or of the pre-Christian Tiv man, for instance. But all these are facts of which no one is today proud, or on account of which cultural superiority is assumed over others. Perhaps Soyinka’s—and Nigeria’s—problem lies in the fact that the Nobel Laureate considers himself an intellectual whose word the world looks forward to. And he is not. True intellectualism is not the mere fact of having been to school or teaching in one. It is all about being conscious, sensitive and aware of the circumstance and of one’s role in it and one’s readiness to sacrifice and suffer to make it better. You are either born an intellectual or you are not: it is an attitude that cannot be learnt; because education and experience only help to refine and sharpen an already existing predisposition—being analytical, being objective and being truly concerned. While some intellectuals choose only to expose a bad situation, others, in addition, fight to change it; and of these, those that succeed are those unencumbered by prejudice of the kind that Soyinka has always exhibited. It is not a quality that the receipt of an international prize—not even a Nobel—can confer on one; and a literary career based solely on the exploration of themes in Yoruba paganism is insufficient a social platform for someone like Soyinka, who is really not fully intellectualised, to articulate usefully on any of the many contentious national issues. That is why Soyinka is never known to have offered a solution that works; or that, when looked at closely, makes any sense. Of issues even within their areas of primary interest, they have no real knowledge—only fancy and conjecture and an overarching desire to belong to the cultural metropolis from which they unconsciously take their cue in spite of all the parroting of authentic Ogun-ness. Nigeria has changed from the closed society of 1964, but those unable to see, or are averse to seeing, healthy change in the nation have decided to cling to the uncreative fiction of the Wetie. And the fact that he is not understood—in his literature and in his analyses—and is therefore not generally effective shouldn’t mean that he doesn’t belong to that distinguished class of tribal jingoists and sectional propagandists; because even if his analysis is not clear—and is probably not even an analysis—his objective is always only too obvious, not least because, as far as the North is concerned, what he bandies about as analysis of its condition and role has remained unchanging over all these years. Three decades and someone has still not grown culturally or developed intellectually; and what a coincidence that Boko Haram also originated in Bo-ro-no State! Someone like him who has chosen the narrowness of a pagan worldview and eschewed the universalism of divine guidance or even that offered by objective secular multiculturalism will never taste the sweetness of true intellectualism. With a mind fixated on hatred and all muddled up with an incurable anti-Northern animus, it has become permanently set and is now a part of character, but too superficial and too ossified to be of any intellectual use. In our situation, it is not those who do not know who are lost, it is those who do not want to learn who are; and all those pretentiously bookish creatures whose knowledge is only from books are in reality ignorant even of them. Of this and of Boko Haram, he doesn’t really understand—and probably never will. Adamu Adamu is the Nigerian Hon. Minister of Higher Education

Wike accuses FG of appointing VCs to rig election. By Mike Odiegwu

…We will treat riggers as coup plotters, says governor Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, has accused the Federal Government of appointing compromised academics, willing to submit names of politically exposed lecturers as returning officers to rig elections for the ruling party, as vice-chancellors of federal universities. × Wike, however, warned VCs and lecturers to be wary of attempts by some unscrupulous politicians to use them to manipulate elections. He declared that those contemplating to rig elections in Rivers would be treated as coup plotters. The governor spoke on Tuesday during the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of 9200 capacity ultramodern convocation arena for the University of Port Harcourt by the Rivers State government. Wike said it was worrisome that Nigeria had degenerated to the point where politicians influenced the appointment of VCs for the purposes of rigging elections. He said: “Let me warn, not one person will dare to rig election in Rivers State. Not one person will dare it. I have told people, allow university community to produce those who will be leaders of this country. “Don’t turn university community to be where you will have politicians who manipulate and change the mandate of the people. Anybody who does that, you know it is a coup and you know the punishment for coup plotters.” The governor said the reason for the jostling for VCs of federal universities was because of political interference by extraneous forces. He described as heartrending a situation whereby lecturers, who were supposed to be revered in society, willfully compromised their integrity, just to become VCs to manipulate elections. “These days, you see a lecturer, a PhD holder, a professor ready to soil his name, to allow himself to be kidnapped and taken somewhere to sign result and to declare somebody who did not win election winner,” he said. The governor enjoined desperate politicians in the ruling party not to dent the integrity of the university system because of their inordinate ambition. Wike warned that any VC that allowed himself to be used to rig election in Rivers State, should be prepared for the consequences of such act. “If you want to play politics with us, I will rub you mud. If you want to join us (politicians), openly come and join us. But if you want to hide under the university, I will rob you mud.” The governor declared that 2023 general election would be completely different from the 2019 election, insisting that attempts to prevent transmission of election results electronically would be resisted. “INEC knows that they have to be prepared in 2023. And that is why we will resist any attempt for anybody to manipulate the amendment of the Electoral Act, to say that election results will not be transmitted electronically. That will not happen. If you want the vote of the people to count, the result must be transmitted electronically.” Wike said that as an alumnus of the University of Port Harcourt, his business was not to play politics in the university, but to contribute to the development of the institution. He promised to complete a primary school building in the university that was abandoned by the previous administration for inexplicable reason. In his remarks, the Acting Vice-Chancellor of University of Port Harcourt, Prof. Stephen Okodudu, commended Wike for consistently identifying with the ideals and aspiration of the university. “You have continued to support the successive administrations of the University through donation of funds and provision of social infrastructure to give meaning to the lives of staff and students. “I recall with nostalgia, that Your Excellency attracted then construction of the Faculties of Law and Social Sciences buildings while serving as the Hon. Minister of State for Education,” he said. Chairman of the Governing Council of the university, Senator Andrew Uchendu applauded Wike for laying the foundation for what would be the best, iconic convocation arena in West Africa. Performing the inauguration of the new convocation arena, the immediate past vice-chancellor of the university, Prof. Ndowa E. Lale, said Wike decision to construct the new convocation arena was a further demonstration that he had a heart to add value to the institution. He declared that history would be kind to Wike because he had deliberately worked conscientiously for public good.

PDP kicks against alleged plans to promote Magu By Gbade Ogunwale

The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has kicked against alleged plans by the Federal Government to promote the ex-Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Ibrahim Magu. The party is reacting to unconfirmed media reports indicating that plans were afoot to promote Magu to Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG), even though the government has not come out with any official position on the alleged plans. In a statement on Tuesday by the spokesman for the PDP, Kola Ologbondiyan, the party slammed the federal government for encouraging corrupt practices by public officials. According to the PDP, the plan to promote Magu was in spite of his alleged open indictment for corruption and abuse of office, by the Justice Ayo Salami-led Presidential Investigation Panel. The party described the move to elevate Magu as outrageous and a direct slap on the sensibilities of Nigerians. The statement said: “It is indeed ludicrous, though true to its proclivity to cover corruption that the Buhari Presidency, instead of allowing the law to take its course, is rather rewarding corruption by reportedly planning to promote an individual indicted for treasury looting and compromising of high-profile corruption cases for pecuniary gains. Read Also: PDP kicks against alleged plans to promote Magu “Our party invites Nigerians to note how the Buhari administration has failed to take disciplinary action against Magu, as recommended by the Salami panel, but seeks to reward him with a promotion in spite of the report by the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, which nailed him for alleged diversion of recovered funds and fraudulent sale of assets seized by the EFCC. “This is in addition to reports by the Department of State Services (DSS) which also stated that Magu had failed the integrity test and will eventually constitute a liability to the anti-corruption stand of the current government. “The reports of planned promotion for Magu have heightened apprehension in the public space that certain top officials in the Buhari Presidency are overburdened with corruption complicity and fear that a docked Magu would expose their atrocities. “Nigerians could recall how the counsel to Magu, Wahab Shittu, boastfully declared that he has Magu’s instruction to inform the public that he will be reinstated back to office.” The PDP called on the Police Service Commission (PSC) and the Police high command to resist the pressure from the “corrupt cabal” in the Buhari Presidency to pitch them against Nigerians over Magu. The main opposition party called on the PSC to commence processes for Magu’s prosecution in a court of competent jurisdiction in the interest of justice. It further called on President Buhari not to “ease off” the allegations of corruption against Magu but should make the Justice Salami report open to the public and if necessary, to prosecute the former EFCC boss.