The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sentry

  • Clash of interests in states over ministerial list

    PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari spoke from a sincere heart at the luncheon he had with National Assembly members on Thursday when he admitted that he was under intense pressure over the appointment of ministers for his new cabinet.

    Investigation conducted by Sentry revealed that the jostle for ministerial posts is at fever pitch in states with serious clash of interests among leading political figures.

    In one particular state, for instance, three prominent political figures are backing different candidates for the state’s only ministerial slot, and none of them is ready to yield ground on the issue. Already, there are fears among observers in the know of the development that it could trigger a crisis that would be difficult to manage.

    The interest of former governors appears to have compounded matters. Many of them have joined the fray in many states, lobbying intensely for a slot in the ministerial list.

    Many have even relocated to Abuja while others are pressing buttons from abroad. The people in the Presidential Villa are said to be amused by the development as nobody is sure of anything.

  • How PDP Reps rebuffed party, Wike, Dogara

    ON Wednesday, the House of Representatives was caught in a turmoil impelled by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) members in the House. Some PDP Reps went wild over the announcement of Ndidi Elumelu as the minority leader.

    The aggrieved members were simply acting the script of their national executive committee (EXCO), Governor Nyesom Wike and the immediate past Speaker of the House, Rt. Hon. Yakubu Dogara.

    The preferred choice of the EXCO and Wike is Hon. Ogundu Kingsley Chinda from Rivers State. Although they made their choice known to the members, the majority felt that since the national chairman of the party, Prince Uche Secondus, hails from the same state as Chinda, it is only fair that the minority leader comes from another state in the Southsouth.

    Determined to have their way in the matter, both the EXCO and Wike reached out to Dogara, who assured them that he would prevail on the Reps to support Chinda’s candidacy. It turned out, however, that all the efforts he made in this regard were to no avail. The party nonetheless forwarded Chinda’s name to the Speaker, Rt. Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila.

    Not ones to give up in the matter, the aggrieved PDP Reps came together and sent a letter to the Speaker, stating unequivocally that Elumelu was their choice for minority leader. The weight of the letter was underscored by the fact that it was signed by more than 90 of the 140 PDP members in the lower chamber. Among them were Reps who had stuck their necks out for the Speaker in the campaign for the exalted office.

    Read also: PDP suspends Elumelu, Ikpeazu, Oke, others

    The Speaker, of course, did their bidding and disregarded the letter from the PDP national EXCO. Enraged by the development, the members loyal to the EXCO threw the house into disarray.

    For the second time, the PDP Reps called the bluff of Wike and the party. It will be recalled that Wike lambasted the lawmakers elected on the PDP platform for voting against the party’s preferred candidates in the election of principal officers of the National Assembly.

  • Unending war of Obaseki, Oshiomhole

    THE funeral was well attended. It was a roll call of who is who in the politics of Edo State. The deceased was a respected surveyor. His son-in-law Mike Itemuagbor, the renowned sports promoter and organiser of Okpekpe race, is a friend of all. He is a confidant of the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, as well as a pal of Edo State governor, Godwin Obaseki.

    The popular expectation was that the two politicians would meet at the occasion, with questions being asked: how will the godson greet his godfather? Will they shun each other? Everybody looked eagerly forward to the ceremony.

    Oshiomhole, a former Edo State governor, came as predicted. He saw the Speaker of the state’s House of Assembly, Hon Frank Okiye and embraced him. Okiye had cut short the aspiration of Oshiomhole’s favourite, Hon. Victor Edoror. The APC national chairman also engaged Obaseki’s deputy Phillip Shuaibu in a tête-à-tête. Shuaibu was a trusted ally of Oshiomhole, but people now believe he is solidly with Obaseki. When will the governor arrive, everyone wondered?

    The comrade ex-governor thoroughly enjoyed himself and left. But in a move that smacked of hide-and-seek, Obaseki showed up less than 10 minutes after Oshiomhole left. Did the governor wait for his predecessor to leave before he showed up? Who is avoiding whom? Is it now a case of irreconcilable differences?

    Four days later, the governor dropped eight commissioners, including Oshiomhole’s nephew, from his cabinet and replaced them with his perceived loyalists. With the way things are in the state, the governor seems to be on the offensive. All appears to be quiet in Oshiomhole’s front. But as a political observer counselled recently, Oshiomhole is one tireless fighter who cannot be written off so easily.

  • Buhari keeps all guessing

    AS the nation waits with bated breath for the announcement of the second term cabinet of President Muhammadu Buhari, the minds of concerned observers are agitated with many questions.

    Who makes the cabinet’s list? Will politicians dominate the list as it was in the President’s first term? Will it be a cabinet of technocrats, considering that the President has hinted that he would work with people who will really help him to make a difference?

    Sentry has been trying to have a glimpse of what the President is putting together, and what has come to light so far is the clash of interests in many states. Some ex-this, ex-that who are determined to make the list are battling well respected technocrats being pushed forward by powerful interests.

    The ex-this and ex-that are threatening fire and brimstone should the President skip them for “people who contributed nothing to the victory of the APC.” One such technocrat being resisted is the chief executive of a parastatal with links to tertiary institutions.

  • Yahoo boy shocks commuters at Edo checkpoint

    IT was like a scene from a Nollywood movie for some commuters who were travelling recently from Ekpoma in Edo State to Benin, the state capital, in a vehicle owned by a popular transport company in the state. A few kilometres to Benin City, the vehicle was stopped by some policemen at a checkpoint.

    The passengers were happy because the vehicle’s driver had been driving recklessly. Then the policemen took a cursory look into the vehicle, sighted a young man in his early 30s and asked him to come down. They demanded for his phone and ordered him to unlock it. He did.

    Just when it looked like the young man’s phone was all the police would ask of him, they demanded for his laptop computer. He told the policemen that he did not have his laptop with him, but they threatened to deal with him if they searched and found the laptop. At that point, he produced the laptop and they searched through it.

    After about 10 minutes, a passenger who had become impatient approached the policemen and pleaded that they should release the boy so that they could continue their journey. But one of the policemen retorted: “Gentleman, do you know what you are asking us to do? This young man can finish all of you. He is a yahoo boy!”

    While the conversation was going on, the young man, who had been handed back his phone, called somebody on it, and in the course of their conversation, was heard saying that he did not have up to N250,000 on him.

    When the telephone conversation ended, the young man turned to the leader of the police team for negotiation. At the end of the discussion, he parted with N88,000 and was released immediately.

  • LASTMA groans under corrupt policemen’s burden

    THE leadership of the Lagos State Transport Management Agency (LASTMA) is in a dilemma over what to do with corrupt policemen deployed at traffic control points in Lagos.

    Investigations conducted by SENTRY revealed that while LASTMA officials are trying to carry out their duty of ensuring free flow of traffic with remarkable civility, inept policemen deployed to give them protection have literally hijacked their jobs and have turned traffic control into a money-spinning venture.

    Consequently, they have devised a means by which they create traffic bottlenecks so that motorists supposedly given the green light are stuck in the middle until the yellow and red lights meet them on the wrong spot. The mischievous policemen then jump into the vehicles of the helpless motorists to harass them until they part with some money.

    At Cappa area in Oshodi, for instance, their antics are said to have become a source of embarrassment to LASTMA officials who often have to watch helplessly as the errant policemen harass innocent motorists, dragging them to LASTMA’s yard in Oshodi and forcing them to cough out sums ranging between 6,000 and 10,000 naira which, of course, end up in their private pockets.

    A LASTMA henchman told SENTRY that the agency had grown sick and tired of the antics of the errant policemen. But he said there was little that LASTMA officials could do about them, “because they are deployed at the traffic control points to give our men protection against notorious motorists and criminal elements.”

  • How Lawan misfired over appointments

    An innate attribute of Nigerian politicians is their ability to surprise and amaze. And the Senate President, Senator Ahmad Lawan, has just proved that he is not in short supply of this attribute with the announcement of six aides whose appointments have left political observers in utter shock.

    Numbered among them, according to a June 19, 2019 memo from the Chief of Staff to the President of the Senate, Babagana Muhammad Aji, to the Clerk of the National Assembly, are Dr (Mrs) Betty Okoroh (Special Assistant on Administration to the President of the Senate), Mohammed Isa (Special Assistant on Media and Publicity), Olu Onemola (Special Assistant on New Media), Tope Brown Olowoyeye (Senior Legislative Aide on Media and Publicity (Photographer) and Ogechukwu E. Nwankwoh (Senior Legislative Aide on Schedules).

    One thing the appointees all have in common is that they were all aides to the immediate past Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, who is reputed for doing everything he could to frustrate the plan by President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) to help Lawan become the President of the 8th Senate. The foregoing is compounded by the appointment, during the week, of Dr Festus Adedayo, an avid critic of APC, Buhari and all they stand for, as Special Adviser to the Senate President on Media and Publicity.

    All the six appointees were said to have been recommended to Lawan by Baba Ahmed, a top aide of Saraki. Lawan was said to have asked Ahmed to help him recruit aides and the latter wasted no time in recommending Saraki boys. He (Ahmed) in turn asked a former media adviser to Saraki, Yusuf Olaniyonu, to recommend a media adviser for the Senate President and Olaniyonu recommended Adedayo, a known Saraki’s loyalist in the media, and Lawan promptly approved his appointment.

    As would be expected, the appointments have turned Lawan’s admirers and supporters against him. Although he yielded slightly to pressure by dropping Adedayo’s name from the list of appointees, he insisted on keeping the remaining five.

    The questions being asked are: Is he so naïve as to surround himself with loyalists of his bitter foe and chieftain of the opposition party? Can he side-step the infamous banana peel in the Senate by starting out in this way? How introspective is he? Does he really have what it takes to lead the Senate? Did he enter into a deal with Saraki without the knowledge of those who backed him to become the Senate President? Questions, questions and more questions.

  • Ndume and the price of obstinacy

    A MAIN feature of the build-up to the just concluded election of the leadership of the Senate was the insistence of the senator representing Borno South, Senator Ali Ndume, to contest the position of Senate President. This was despite the fact that his party, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), had made it clear that Senator Ahmad Lawan was its anointed candidate. All entreaties made to Ndume to toe the party’s line and step down for Lawan fell on deaf ears.

    Up till the night before the election, friends, associates and concerned party members tried in vain to persuade Ndume against a move they considered an affront on the party on whose platform he rode to the upper chamber. Top government officials, including a former governor and the head of a powerful government agency, were said to have told him to step down to avoid personal humiliation even if he would not do so in the interest of the party. But like the straying dog that would not hear the hunter’s whistle, the senator remained obstinate.

    At the base of his confidence was his adoption by some PDP elders and governors on the eve of the election. In fact, he told one of the people who persuaded him to step down: “Have you not heard that I have been adopted by the PDP? I am going to win tomorrow.”

    Of course, the election held and Ndume could only garner a paltry 28 votes against the winner, Senator Ahmad Lawan’s 79. The Yobe South senator is now left with the task of worming himself back into the good books of his party.

  • Senate President: How South-south governor engineered PDP’s loss

    THE embarrassing defeat suffered by the PDP in Tuesday’s contest for the position of Senate President would have been avoided but for the insistence of a South-south governor on the eve of the election that the party must adopt a candidate, contrary to the party’s initial position that it would not present or adopt any.

    The South-south governor, whose state is awash with oil funds as a result of hefty monthly allocations and also the centre of war in past elections, was in Abuja a day before the election, where he argued forcefully for the party to adopt a candidate.

    Even when other top party members drew his attention to the fact that the PDP did not have the number for a keen contest, he retorted: “What is number?” He then said he was ready to put down any amount to buy over enough APC members-elect to make up the number the PDP needed.

    At that point, the opposition party decided to adopt APC’s Senator Ali Ndume who lost to Senator Ahmad Lawan by a wide margin. Whether the South-south governor spent the money or APC senators-elect collected but voted their conscience, no one knows. But adapting the words of former Akwa Ibom State governor, Senator Godswill Akpabio, the South-south governor reportedly boasted that the votes that money cannot get, more money will get.

  • Dollar rain for senators-elect

    SOME weeks ago, members- elect of the incoming 9th session of the National Assembly held an induction course in Abuja. The purpose was to acquaint them with legislative procedures and ethics.

    There is no gainsaying the fact that it was a well-attended event. But the high point of the gathering was the dollar rain that greeted it. A senator- elect, who was still a governor at the time, “blessed his fellow senators-elect” with two million dollars!

    Was it to offset their campaign expenses? Was it to position himself for headship of a juicy committee, post-inauguration? Tough questions.

    SENTRY, however, learnt that the senators-elect went home satisfied.