Nigeria News
NGF Dead, Nigerian factor proves a wrecker again
Bayo Onanuga
The Nigeria Governors Forum is dead. A very noble idea, copied from the United States, has been sacrificed, on the altar of Nigeria’s peculiar brand of cheap and petty politics, governed by the mentality of ‘winning at all costs’, a politics that brooks no opposition to the president and that will stop at nothing to smash any opposition on the way.
Governor Godswill Akpabio and his group of governors dealt the fatal blow on the 14 year-old forum on Friday night. Yesterday, it completed the embalming and buried it. To be sure, Akpabio and co. will certainly be remembered for a long time for this.
The death of NGF was inevitable, judging by the chain of events leading to Friday’s re-election of Governor Rotimi Amaechi as the chairman.
Amaechi, who succeeded Bukola Saraki, former governor of Kwara state as chairman in 2011 had breathed a new life in the NGF, making it politically relevant, canvassing positions, at times opposite those upheld by the Presidency.
Amaechi:
Godswill Akpabio, Akwa Ibom State governor: very anti-Amaechi
One of the most bold positions was the decision of the NGF to challenge the Federal Government’s decision to create a Sovereign Wealth Fund, whereby money jointly owned by the three tiers of government, will be deducted by the custodian of the funds, the Federal Government for some foreign investment, completely out of control of the entire owners of the fund. The NGF position was rooted in the Nigerian constitution: when it comes to Federation money, the Federal government does not own everything; it is just a custodian and thus states can question it about how the finances are managed by Federal officials.
Even though, the SWF has taken off, the resolution of the constitutional issues is before the apex court.
The NGF has also vigorously canvassed for state police and generally under Amaechi’s leadership, Nigerians have seen the forum playing more activist role, giving the nation an alternative viewpoint and making the governors compare notes with one another, in terms of policy and programme implementation in their states.
As the NGF’s public profile blossomed, also blossomed the plot to unseat Amaechi and reduce his and NGF’s political relevance and influence.
The first step taken was the formation of the PDP’s Governors Forum, under the leadership of Godswill Akpabio, an undisguised deep hater of Amaechi, also a PDP governor. On its own, the PDP Forum ought to be a powerful platform, consisting of 24 PDP Governors, who make up two-thirds of the NGF. But the Akpabio group was not satisfied with this.
Apparently, the group coveted the bigger, all embracing platform for the Nigerian governors and thus worked out a strategy to take control and cut out Amaechi.
For the election last Friday, the Northern Governors Forum purportedly met and endorsed Jonah Jang of Plateau state as the consensus candidate of the zone. There are 19 Northern Governors and on paper Jang, should sail through as the new NGF chairman. Then the Akpabio-led group of governors, said to be inspired by President Goodluck Jonathan or sympathetic to the President, some say under pressure and blackmail, also collected the signatures of politically- mixed 19 governors, which included the APGA-PDP governor of Anambra state and the Labour-PDP governor of Ondo state, enough to stage a coup de grace against Amaechi. Armed with the signatures, the group came to the election venue and asked that Amaechi hand over. Not so fast, the other governors said. The NGF rules say there must be an election. And so the election was held, with Akpabio and Jonah Jang’s majority vanishing into the thin air.
Instead of Jang winning, it was Amaechi that got the magical 19 votes, while Jang got 16 votes. One governor was absent. In politics, what could have happened was that out of the 19 votes that Jang thought he had in his pocket, three simply failed to deliver. Since the vote was by secret ballot, with a simple writing of names, three governors in the Akpabio camp simply switched allegiance to the Amaechi side.
This is politics, real politics and one thinks it is taught in Politics 101 that never count the vote, until delivered. Even in real life, ‘Never count your chickens, until the eggs are hatched!
Akpabio and Jang did not accept the result. They staged a walkout and announced that the vote had been rigged! How can an election, a club election of 36 governors be rigged in the full glare of Nigeria’s leaders?
Political observers have simply found it hard to accept the verdict of Akpabio and what is being suspected is that the Nigerian factor has come into play again. In Nigeria, politicians do not easily accept defeat; a Nigerian politician expects to win and he loses because the opponent rigs him out!
The NGF has never been the same since Friday night. Even though Amaechi in his speech, attempted to reconcile with the Akpabio group and their principal, President Jonathan, the Akpabio-Jang camp went on full throttle, accelerating the demise of NGF.
On Saturday, the group presented Jang as its alternative NGF chairman and moved its base to the Benue State Lodge in Abuja.
Reporters said 18 Governors attended the presentation at Benue State Lodge when they announced the decision to journalists.
In a communiqué they issued after their meeting, the Governors said they stood by the endorsement of 18 governors, who had earlier pledged their support for Jang who is the consensus candidate to be chosen by them before the NGF election and not Amaechi.
Governor Mimiko, who was also presented as the Vice Chairman of the Jang-led NGF, read the six-paragraph communiqué issued and jointly endorsed by the faction.
“The Nigeria Governors’ Forum, under the new leadership of Governor Jonah Jang, as Chairman and Governor Olusegun Mimiko as the Vice Chairman, at the inaugural meeting held today, Saturday, May 25, 2013, resolved as follows:
“The new chairman of the NGF thanks Northern Governors’ Forum, the PDP Governors’ Forum and all the governors for the support and confidence reposed in him and vowed to work for the interest of the forum and country.
“The chairman of the NGF, Governor Jonah Jang vows to unite members of the forum, work for the interest of the forum and the country.
“The forum re-states its commitment to continue being a platform for peer review, productive and collaborative engagement with all levels of government.
“The forum also resolves to continue to encourage and collaborate with Mr. President to restore peace and security in the country.
Apart from Akpabio, Mimiko and Jang the other Governors opposed to Amaechi’s victory include Idris Wada of Kogi, Gabriel Suswam of Benue, Sullivan Chime of Enugu, Martin Elechi of Ebonyi, Theodore Orji of Abia, Peter Obi of Anambra and Isa Yuguda of Bauchi. Also in the pro Jonathan camp are Ibrahim Shema of Katsina, Mukhtar Yero of Kaduna, Garba Umar of Taraba, Ahmed Abdulfatah of Kwara, Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State, Liyel Imoke of Cross River, Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa and Gombe Deputy Governor, Thaanod Rubainu.
And so marked the end of the NGF, the way we had known it since 1999, killed by Nigeria’s politics.
.bayo Onanuga is the editor-in-chief of TheNEWS magazine and Pmnewsnigeria.com
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Posted in Nigeria News. A DisNaija.Com network.
Source: PM News
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The Kano State Government on Saturday said it has transferred 1,098 ‘almajiris’ to different states of the country.
The commissioner for local government, Murtala Garo, disclosed this while presenting a report before the state’s task force on COVID-19 at the government house, Kano.
Almajiris are children who are supposed to be learning Islamic studies while living with their Islamic teachers. Majority of them, however, end up begging on the streets of Northern Nigeria. They constitute a large number of Nigeria’s over 10 million out-of-school children.
Mr Garo said the Kano government transported 419 almajiris to Katsina, 524 to Jigawa and 155 to Kaduna. He said all of them tested negative for coronavirus before leaving the Kano State.
Despite the coronavirus test done in Kano for the almajiris, the Jigawa government earlier said it would quarantine for two weeks all the almajiris that recently arrived from Kano.
Mr Garo said another 100 almajiris scheduled to be taken to Bauchi State also tested negative to COVID-19.
In a remark, Governor Abdullahi Ganduje said the COVID-19 situation in Kano was getting worse. He appealed for a collaborative effort to curtail the spread of the virus in the state.
Mr Ganduje, who commended residents for complying with the lockdown imposed in the state, said the decision was taken to halt the spread of the virus.
Kano State, as of Saturday night, has 77 coronavirus cases, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.
The decision to transfer the Kano almajiris is part of the agreement reached between Northern governors that almajiris in each state be transferred to their states of origin.
However, even before the latest agreement by the governors, the Kano government had been transferring almajiris to other states and neighbouring countries after it banned street begging in the state, most populous in Northern Nigeria.
Despite the transfers, however, no concrete step has been taken to ensure such children do not return to Kano streets as there is freedom of movement across Nigeria although interstate travel was recently banned to check the spread of the coronavirus.
Sourced From: Premium Times Nigeria
By Ugochukwu Alaribe
Operatives of the Abia State Vigilante Service, AVS, popularly known as ‘Bakassi Boys’ have arrested 24 market women hidden in a container truck, at Ekwereazu Ngwa, the boundary community between Abia and Akwa Ibom states.
The market women, said to be from Akwa Ibom State, were on their way to Aba, when they were arrested with the truck driver and two of his conductors for violating the lockdown order by the state government.
Driver of the truck, Moses Asuquo, claimed he was going to Aba to purchase stock fish, but decided to assist the market women, because they were stranded.
A vigilante source told Sunday Vanguard that the vehicle was impounded while the market women were sent back to Akwa Ibom State.
Commissioner for Home Land Security, Prince Dan Okoli, who confirmed the incident, said that smuggling of people into the state poses great threat to the state government’s efforts to contain the spread of COVID- 19.
Sourced From: Vanguard News
Operatives of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID), Yaba of the Lagos State police command have arrested one Mrs Nene Steve for allegedly killing her maid, Joy Adole
The maid was allegedly beaten to death by Nene for requesting for her salary at their residence located at 18, Ogundola Street, Bariga area in Lagos.
Narrating the incident, Philips Ejeh, an elder brother to the deceased said that he was sad when they informed him that his sister was beaten to death.
He explained that the deceased was an indigene of Benue State brought to Lagos through an agent and started working with her as a maid in January 2020.
‘’She reported that her boss refused to pay her and anytime she asked for her salary she will start beating her.
She was making an attempt to leave the place but due to the total lockdown she remained there until Sunday when her boss said she caught her stealing noodles and this led to her serious beating and death,’’ Ejeh said.
He called on Lagos State Government and well- meaning people in the country to help them in getting justice for the victim.
The police spokesman, Bala Elkana, stated that the woman and her husband came to Bariga Police Station to a report that their house girl had committed suicide.
Detectives were said to have visited the house and suspected foul play with the position of the rope and bruises all over the body which confirmed that the girl had been tortured to death and the boss decided to hang up the girl to make it look like suicide.
He said: “The police moved on with their investigation and found a lot of sign of violence on her body that she has been tortured before a rope was put on her neck.’’
He added that the police removed the corpse and deposited it in the mortuary for autopsy to further ascertain the cause of the death.
Elkana said the matter has been transferred from Bariga police station to Panti for further investigation while the couple have been arrested and will be charged to court.
Ostensibly alarmed by the latest killings of dozens of soldiers by Boko Haram insurgents, President Muhammadu Buhari has summoned an urgent meeting of Service Chiefs to find ways to stop the trend.
He has also dispatched the Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan Ali, to the neighbouring Republic of Chad for an urgent meeting with President Idris Deby and his defence counterpart.
Knowledgeable sources said in Abuja on Friday that the president is worried by on the deterioration of security situation on the Nigeria – Chad Border that has led to the recently increased Boko Haram terrorism in the area.
The sources which did not want to be named in Abuja said: “Nigeria has a Chad problem in the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) put together to secure the Lake Chad basin areas and repeal the Boko Haram terrorist attacks against all the countries neighbouring the Lake.”
The sources noted that Chad is believed to be having their own internal security challenges and this has reportedly led to their pulling away their own troops manning their own border around Lake Chad, saying: “That lacuna is being exploited by the Boko Haram terrorists, who go in and out of Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon to launch terrorist acts. This is a clear illustration of the fact that terrorism is beyond national borders.”
When contacted, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, confirmed that the Defence Minister is going to Chad but said he is unaware of the purpose.
Meanwhile, the military authorities are said to be in the process of identifying the families of the latest victims with a view to making contact with them.
Credible sources revealed that it is the reason the president is yet to make any pronouncement on the matter.
“The President has called an urgent meeting with the Service Chiefs, as well as the fact that families of the latest victims of the Boko Haram are being identified and contacts made before a government pronouncement on the tragic attacks. This, it is understood, is the reason for the silence of the government over the incident,” the source said.
Sourced From: Tribune
Nigeria records 55 new COVID-19 infections, total now 165,110
Military, Police Ring Abuja to Forestall Boko Haram Attack
UFC: Usman gets N584m after beating Masvidal
Insecurity: Lagos bans occupation of abandoned buildings
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