Atiku Abubakar  has the PDP ticket  He stole the show. The margin of victory shut some mouths and left others agape. It  left no room for  further contests. In the parlance of the NPN politicians of the old, it was a ‘moon slide’ victory. Those who had called the shots in PDP in the last few months were left to lick their wounds. Some of them ran away before the convention ended. Others sat, visibly punch-drunk  and swallowed everything. Atiku abubakar has work to do.

She is, unaguably, an unrepentant follower of President Muhammed Buhari. She  heads one of the country’s cash cows, the multi billion naira Lagos International
Trade Fair in Lagos. Mrs. Lucy Ajayi’s name is synominous with whatever the head of state represents and she said that much and many more during an encounter with Saturday Vanguard in her office at the sprawling Trade Fair complex in Ojo, Lagos. Excerpts:

Makurdi, Mr Oryiman Alu, State Manager, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), says 90 Benue indigenes have received N50, 000 each from its Conditional Grant Scheme (CGS).

On first meeting with Mummy Favour; she does not leave you in doubt of who she is or what she stands for, a    peace loving Christian whose faith is deeply rooted and solidly based on Christianity and all that it entails. The names of her four children are testimony to her near cult like religious devotion; Miracle, Pentecost, Favour and Divine. Not for her the antiquated names such as Elizabeth, Mary, David and Sarah, nor the heathenish Chukwu Emeka and Chibuzor sent as names from the village. Mummy Favour owns a small but perhaps most patronised and thriving neighbourhood frozen foods shop, selling chicken, turkey, fish and very recently crabs and shrimps. A very beautiful, young woman most likely in her mid to late 30s, Mummy Favour appears a well bred woman. Her very fair complexion and neat appearance naturally attracts one to her. But then, she was well equipped for the trade she embarked upon being the only one with a big enough generating set to take care of the epileptic power supply, the bane of most entrepreneurs of such small scale businesses.    This way, one was always guaranteed of fresh products from her shop which no doubt was responsible for the high patronage she received. Many did not even mind that they often had to pay a little more than what obtains in other shops around.

As part of solutions to end unemployment in Nigeria, Chairman of OBAT Petroleum, His Imperial Majesty Oba,Dr. Fredrick Obateru Akinruntan has charged youths to embrace entrepreneurship and idea generation.

Bauchi state government through the Head of civil service, Alhaji Liman Bello has urged civil servants and pensioners who were yet to receive their entitlements to exercise patience, following the closure of six microfinance banks in the state by the National Deposit Insurance Commission (NDIC).

Pop star, Davido has proven times without number that he is a cheerful giver, from showering his label mates with expensive gifts to splashing millions on some of his fans on social media. The singer is back at his good deeds as he will be assisting a young man to get into the university. The twitter user reached out to the DMW boss via the app to inform him that he had been granted admission to his (Davido) father’s institution, Adeleke University but is unable to commence lectures as he can’t afford the school fees.

But that’s not just all about his involvement in Nigeria’s development. In this interview, he reveals his peace-building roles at critical junctures in Nigeria’s history with emphasis on the Presidential Amnesty Programme and resolving the acrimony that arose from the quit notice given to Igbo by Arewa youths last year

Accord Party Candidate for House of Representative,Esan North East/Esan South East Federal Constituency, Edo State Women are grossly under-represented in active governance in Nigeria. The total number of women in the House of Reps is a glaring instance of how women are traditionally relegated in the affairs of steering the ship of the nation.

Since the dawn of civilization, democracy and monarchy are always at daggers drawn because of the different concepts and their impacts on the welfare of the people. Monarchs are known to be authoritarian and theirs words are always laws. The people under their authority are regarded as subjects and they contribute little or nothing in the run of governance. Only one of the blue blood in the family is expected to be crowned one day as king. In the case of democracy, the power resides with the people and they exercise that periodically. The people are regarded as citizens and their impacts and contributions are paramount in the affairs of the society, state or nation. Everybody in a democracy, in the words of Jesse Jackson, a leading American civil rights leader, is a crown prince and could be a president, governor, council chairman or legislator one day.