Thursday, 16 October 2014
FORMER head of state General Muhammadu Buhari has come up with a nine-point plan to salvage Nigeria which he said will serve as his blueprint if elected to the presidency kind of similar to President Goodluck Jonathan's Transformation Agenda.
Published yesterday at Eagle Square Abuja where General Buhari launched his 2015 presidential election campaign, the agenda was portrayed as the solution to end the ongoing rot in the country. With the declaration, General Buhari is now an official candidate for the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential ticket and will be standing when the party holds its primaries.
Attracting a large turnout of supporters and associates including several senior party officials, the declaration appeared to have the backing of the APC hierarchy. Although party leader Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu was absent, his wife, Senator Oluremi Tinubu and many other senators from the southwest were present.
Four APC governors including Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State, Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State, Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State and Tanko al-Makura of Nasarawa State were present. Among senior party officials at the venue were the national vice chairman, northeast, Pastor David Lawal and the APC national secretary Mai Mala.
Senate minority leader and former governor of Benue State, Senator George Akume led the National Assembly delegation that included several senators and members of the House of Representatives. Also in attendance was the younger brother of late President Umaru Yar‘Adua, Col Abdulaziz Yar‘Adua and a former member of the House of Representatives and Zilani Ibrahim.
Former vice president Atiku Abubakar’s declaration earlier on in the day was more serene but a source in his campaign said he chose not to invite party officials and governors in order not to compromise them. General Buhari’s declaration served as an opportunity for several governorship and senatorial aspirants from hoping to ride on his coattails to showcase their aspirations.
General Buhari's nine-point agenda included:
*Protection of lives and property
*Pursuing economic policies for shared prosperity and immediate attention on youth employment
*Quality education for development, modernity and social mobility
*Agricultural productivity for taking millions out of poverty and ensuring food security.
*Reviving industries to generate employment and “make things” not just to remain hawkers of other peoples’ goods
*Developing solid minerals exploitation which will substantially attract employment and revenue for government
*Restoring honour and integrity to public service by keeping the best and attracting the best.
*Tackling corruption which has become blatant and widespread. The rest of the world looks at Nigeria as the home of corruption. Nigeria is a country where stealing is not corruption
*Respecting the constitutional separation of powers among the executive, legislature and judiciary and respecting the rights of citizens
Former Bayelsa State governor Timpre Sylva, said: “Buhari is not in this race for himself. He is in this race because of us, the younger people.
"We are very happy that he has decided to come out of retirement to help us stabilise this country so that you and I, the younger ones can carry on with the development of this great nation. And people even say General Buhari is too old, to them, I will only quote the words of the former president of America, late President Ronald Regan who said we are not going to make age an issue in this campaign because we do not want to be accused of taking advantage of the inexperience of our opponent.”
Former People's Democratic Party chairman Audu Ogbeh, who introduced the aspirant said that General Buhari was not the religious bigot that he has been sometimes depicted to be by political rivals. Noting General Buhari’s links with many Christians, Dr Ogbeh described those who made such claims as enemies of Nigeria who did not mind dividing Nigeria along religious lines.
Twitter is already a battleground in the 2016 election. The microblogging service lets public figures bypass the news-media circus and deliver messages straight to the public. It's the perfect hub for elaborate Photoshop digs and gems of sinister trolling. But the flip side of that coin is the irresponsible rhetoric, strange gibberish, misfires and gaffes politicians tweet by mistake — a truly unfiltered feed, all on display so the American people know what they're dealing with in a potential leader. Unless Twitter has anything to say about it.
Over the weekend, Twitter furthered its effort to protect politicians from transparency by cutting off Politwoops and Diplotwoops, two services run by the Open State Foundation that catalogued and exposed the deleted tweets of politicians and diplomats worldwide.
The service had already been shut down in the United States back in May, but this new decision extends the ban to 30 more countries where the service was operating, including the United Kingdom, Sweden, Turkey and South Korea.
"Twitter considers it a violation of their terms of agreement, but that was known for five years. Politwoops has worked for five years and has extensively been used and cited by journalists in various countries," Open State director Arjan El Fassed told Mic. "The question is, why did Twitter suddenly ... close down API access after five years [of it] being condoned?"
But there's one group Twitter's really catering to, and it's not you and me. Twitter proudly announced two weeks ago that it was expanding their services for brands to help them plug into, search and exploit the massive database of 200 billion yearly tweets.
That announcement begins by praising the user information available to corporations:
"Unfortunately, Twitter's decision to pull the plug on Politwoops is a reminder of how the Internet isn't truly a public square," Sunlight Foundation president Christopher Gates wrote in June.
There are no similar, hard rules that say that politicians, in the use of their personal Twitter accounts, are public servants. But Silicon Valley corporations are working to tip the scale in favor of the powerful.
Why? That's easy. Business isn't good, and Twitter needs to find a way to make money. Aside from running advertisements and promoted tweets, which aren't working very well, selling their entire firehose of data so that marketers can use Twitter to surveil customers is one of Twitter's only useful business propositions.
There's one way to fend for ourselves: Delete all of your tweets in protest. Ever since Twitter built out its brand tools, deleting every tweet you've ever made has become a trend. Some influential Twitter users in technology and media have purged their feeds. As the Awl's John Herrman wrote, it doesn't matter how edgy or how tame your feed is — tweets devoid of context feel like "a stupid way to represent yourself to the world."
"What elected politicians publicly say is a matter of public record," El Fassed said yesterday on the Open State Foundation website. "Even when tweets are deleted, it's part of parliamentary history. These tweets were once posted and later deleted. What politicians say in public should be available to anyone."
Over the weekend, Twitter furthered its effort to protect politicians from transparency by cutting off Politwoops and Diplotwoops, two services run by the Open State Foundation that catalogued and exposed the deleted tweets of politicians and diplomats worldwide.
The service had already been shut down in the United States back in May, but this new decision extends the ban to 30 more countries where the service was operating, including the United Kingdom, Sweden, Turkey and South Korea.
"Twitter considers it a violation of their terms of agreement, but that was known for five years. Politwoops has worked for five years and has extensively been used and cited by journalists in various countries," Open State director Arjan El Fassed told Mic. "The question is, why did Twitter suddenly ... close down API access after five years [of it] being condoned?"
All users of the Internet are made alike, Twitter says. Not so, says democracy.Twitter's explanation appeals to every user's worst fear: "Imagine how nerve-racking — terrifying, even — tweeting would be if it was immutable and irrevocable?" Twitter wrote to the Open State Foundation when it said it would be cutting off access. "No one user is more deserving of that ability than another."
But there's one group Twitter's really catering to, and it's not you and me. Twitter proudly announced two weeks ago that it was expanding their services for brands to help them plug into, search and exploit the massive database of 200 billion yearly tweets.
That announcement begins by praising the user information available to corporations:
Dr. Carl Sagan once famously said, "You have to know the past to understand the present." For brands to most effectively analyze Twitter data in the present, they also need to know what's happened in the past.All users of the Internet are made alike, Twitter says. But democracy says that isn't so. When politicians communicate as part of their job, the people of an open democracy get to hold on to those records. It's why, when reporters discovered Hillary Clinton had maintained a private email server, it set off a political scandal we're still talking about today.
"Unfortunately, Twitter's decision to pull the plug on Politwoops is a reminder of how the Internet isn't truly a public square," Sunlight Foundation president Christopher Gates wrote in June.
There are no similar, hard rules that say that politicians, in the use of their personal Twitter accounts, are public servants. But Silicon Valley corporations are working to tip the scale in favor of the powerful.
Why? That's easy. Business isn't good, and Twitter needs to find a way to make money. Aside from running advertisements and promoted tweets, which aren't working very well, selling their entire firehose of data so that marketers can use Twitter to surveil customers is one of Twitter's only useful business propositions.
"What politicians say in public should be available to anyone."By using Twitter, we're all collaboratively building a database of information. This move demonstrates Twitter's ranking of who should have access to it. At the top are corporations, and at the bottom are regular users like you.
There's one way to fend for ourselves: Delete all of your tweets in protest. Ever since Twitter built out its brand tools, deleting every tweet you've ever made has become a trend. Some influential Twitter users in technology and media have purged their feeds. As the Awl's John Herrman wrote, it doesn't matter how edgy or how tame your feed is — tweets devoid of context feel like "a stupid way to represent yourself to the world."
That you might be able to explain [your tweets] if asked, or reconstruct the context, is irrelevant, because that's not how they'll be experienced: they'll show up in a search, where their decontextualized strangeness, failing to rise to the level of actual inquiry, will nonetheless leave some kind of impression.After all, people should have control over their autonomy and public identities. But politicians are not like the rest of us.
"What elected politicians publicly say is a matter of public record," El Fassed said yesterday on the Open State Foundation website. "Even when tweets are deleted, it's part of parliamentary history. These tweets were once posted and later deleted. What politicians say in public should be available to anyone."