The governorship primary for Taraba state was moved from Jalingo to Abuja with no explanations offered whatsoever. Darius Ishaku who had just resigned his position as minister in the federal cabinet, was handpicked as the PDP flag bearer for the Taraba governorship election even as 750 delegates of the party from different local governments in Taraba, were locked out of the venue of a party primary that never was. The venue of the primary election was of course the PDP’s rarefied Wadata Plaza in Abuja.

IT is sad that rather than get the security agencies to unearth the persons and motives behind the assassination attempt on Ike Ekweremadu, the All Progressives Congress, APC, have apparently resorted to trivialize a serious national issue. This is the case with write-up entitled: “Ekweremadu’s Assassination Drama” published in the Vanguard of November 25, 2015 and written by one Dan Owegie who identified himself as an APC chieftain in Benin, Edo State.
It is not for Owegies of this world to dictate to Ekweremadu’s security how to secure their principal. If Ekweremadu’s security did not open fire on the assailants as Owegie argued, could it be that on a second thought they considered the vehicle could be bomb-laden, especially as the front view of the tinted car clearly showed it was driven by a man whose appearance easily aroused suspicion? Could it be there could have been civilian casualties? Such and other details are what they owe the top echelon of their agencies, not the public.
However, Owegie’s bitter whinnying over what he deems APC’s patrimony that Ekweremadu collected only goes to confirm that the APC and promoters of gridlock are unrepentantly unpretentious about their desperation to end the Ikeoha Ndigbo Deputy Senate Presidency. They seem to have abandoned their promises to provide free meals to over 20 million pupils daily, payment of N5,000 to over 25 million jobless Nigerians, bring back Chibok girls, and bring the Naira at parity with the US Dollar. Instead, unseating Ekweremadu has now become their new national goal, which they have elevated to key deliverable of their government.
Speculations and conspiracy theories are natural outcomes of incidences of shady acts, unguarded statements and body language. In APC government, body language is a key medium of communication. Such acts, innuendos and body languages are therefore compasses with which to locate and interpret series of related and unrelated actions, inactions and utterances of the APC-led government.
Behind a façade of APC’s “CHANGE”, integrity and turn-coat democracy, the APC Presidency in essence treats Nigerians as immature, petulant aggregate of primitives who cannot be counted upon to behave sensibly, but must be whipped into line with endless half truths, diatribe, and intimidation, stigmatisation and Gestapo treatments. One event leads to another in an endless chain of rights abuses, blackmail, bastardisation of principles of democracy and extortion of loyalty.
It is in pursuit of these policies of malignity and suppression, that also propelled one Andrew Oota, former Special Assistant to erstwhile Speaker Aminu Tambawal, to write the unfortunate piece: “Ekweremadu: The unwanted change agent” and published in Leadership Newspaper, on November 14, 2015.
In the said article, the same man whose master retained his speakership after defecting to the APC and in whose Benue State APC minority produced the current Speaker had the guts to write that “for the APC leadership and other stakeholders, the emergence of senator Ekweremadu was simply an aberration that should not be allowed to stand, if the reforms and the change mantra that the APC rode onto power during the 2015 general elections is anything to hold onto”.
Nigerians have witnessed several attempts by APC and its surrogates in the Senate to undermine and terminate the deputy senate presidency of Ekweremadu and maybe, to their best of luck, the Senate Presidency of Dr Saraki. These include, but not limited to unsuccessful charges of forgery of Senate rules, blackmailing of the Senate President of running PDP Senate, politically-motived trial of Saraki by CCT, sustained media attacks and most recently, dastardly attempt to denigrate the seat of DSP at the Senate by Senator Mrs. Tinubu.
When the above scenario is aligned with the publicised threats and innuendos of APC stalwarts like Ngige and Kwakwanso, one will not be mistaken to state that the primary orientation of APC is to malign, blackmail, destroy and uproot perceived opponents by fair or foul means.
It is in this light that an x-ray of the alleged assassination attempt on the life of Deputy President of the Senate should be conducted. On June 14, 2015, APC senators under the aegis of Senate Unity Forum announced that “the only condition that would make them recognise Senator Saraki as President of the Senate was for Ekweremadu to resign as Deputy Senate President”. On June 16, 2015, Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso was quoted as ranting that the election of Senator Ekweremadu as Deputy Senate President will create problem for Buhari.
On June 25, 2015, Senator Chris Ngige, stated that: “Senator Ekweremadu’s emergence as deputy president of the senate will give PDP in the South East the desired oxygen to breath and that disadvantages us and puts us in a difficult position on our aspiration to make the South East people to join APC government”. He went on to threaten: “You know, there are many ways to kill a rat. You can decide to go and kill it manually, you can go and put it in hot water, and you can use poison – Gammalin. We are back to the drawing table because it (Ekweremadu) poses a problem for us”.
On November 12, 2015, anti-Saraki senators led by Senators Ahmad Lawan and George Akume, walked out from Senate plenary in protest of the Deputy Senate President presiding over the Senate in absence of the Senate President. According to them: “ We noticed with grave sadness, the handover of the hallowed chamber of the Senate today to the opposition party, the PDP, by allowing Senator Ike Ekweremadu, a PDP stalwart, to preside over the APC majority senators.” On November 14, there was publication in the Leadership Newspaper on how Ekweremadu has become an “unwanted change agent”. On November 17, there was a suspected assassination attempt on the life of Senator Ekweremadu and on November 18, Senator Mrs. Tinubu made frantic attempts to take over the seat of the Deputy Senate President but for the pragmatic intervention of PDP.
These events, threats, and pronouncements lend credence to the real intent of those hoodlums who attacked the Deputy Senate President. In common legal parlance, a prima facie is used to describe the apparent nature of something upon initial observation. In this instance, could it be right to suggest that a prima facie case has sufficiently been established for a possible direction from which harm could befall the Deputy President of Nigerian Senate? When a leading party stalwart stated that Senator Ekweremadu as DSP will emasculate the political landscape in the South East to the disadvantage of APC in the zone and declared that they have gone to drawing board to apply “many ways to kill a rat”, one may ask: Is road rage and “unfortunate ghastly motor accident” one of the gammalin ways?
There was a certain barren tortoise who boasted before his kinsmen that in event of stampede in the marketplace, he would kill the pregnant wife of his brother so that she would not populate the land with his brother’s children. On the market day, there was indeed a stampede and the pregnant tortoise was trampled to death. The village arrested the tortoise for murder and stoned him to death.

Nigerians have been groaning under the heavy burden of acute fuel scarcity which has hit the country for the third week running. Also the issue of power which many thought was beginning to improve for the better has gone bad again, thereby leaving behind anguish and lamentations across the nation. Interestingly, these vital components of […]

“The Judiciary is the last hope of the common man”, is a very popular maxim in the country. Every one, both the high and mighty and the downtrodden, places the Judiciary in very high pedestal. Even without any funds to prosecute their cases the poor have willing and available public spirited lawyers to handle cases on their behalf.

INEC was wrong by asking APC to substitute late Abubakar Audu with a new candidate. INEC will also be wrong to have asked for a transfer of the late Audu’s votes to Falake or a new candidate who did not participate in the election. In an election, the electoral umpire cannot change the goal-post in the middle of the game like INEC has done. It is ethically, morally & legally wrong to do so. The actions of INEC are null & void and cannot not stand the judicial test of time.

For the second time in her existence, Apple Inc, the company founded by the two Steves (Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak) has been certified as the world’s most valuable company with a market capitalization of $772 Billion.

One of the finest persons I have been privileged to know is Odia Ofeimun: the man has a clean heart, he is completely incapable of malice, and in the face of all odds, he has a sunny view of life, add to that his incandescent mind, his absolute brilliance from which has poured forth a prodigious volume of poetry collections, books, essays, years of journalism practice and a reputation as a public intellectual of the very first rank.

It was at about 6am, Tuesday, October 13, 2015 that my friend, Chief Torch O. Taire, sadly, passed onto the great beyond. It has been so unsettling that I could not write a word to his name until I was recently persuaded by a mutual friend, Mr Peter Arigbe, to do so. I, therefore, took cognisance of the import of the situation and the need to share my thoughts and feelings about this great man of our time that had come to represent different things to different people.

The political history of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) will never be complete without the mention of the party’s rigging machinery. The grassroots structure of PDP is one, built on the fulcrum of well-oiled rigging machinery. For many, it started sixteen years ago but for those who follow political history of this nation closely, it was a pattern structured by the founders of the party well before then.

I concur with Mr. Deji Adeyanju. The most heartless and reprehensible thing that our government could have done is to cover-up the fact that 105 of our soldiers were killed by Boko Haram a few days ago. To do such a thing is simply evil.