The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sentry

  • May 29: And Fani-Kayode goes spiritual

    May 29: And Fani-Kayode goes spiritual

    Ahead of the May 29 swearing in ceremony for President-elect Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, his fellow party man and former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, has gone spiritual as he a envisages better life for Nigerians under his leadership.

    Fani-Kayode, a member of APC presidential campaign council, in a lengthy post on his verified Twitter handle, @realFFK, on Friday, said “after the swearing in of our President-elect, @officialABAT, it will be a time for healing our land, building bridges between our people, showing love to our adversaries, re-building our nation, establishing eternal peace with all men of goodwill and putting an end to the hostility and acrimony that exists between us all.”

    Waxing even more spiritual, the ex-Minister added that “the new dispensation will usher in a new and refreshing era in which our beautiful and great nation shall excel and go from strength to strength. Nigeria must and will play her expected role in the emerging new world order. She must and will take her rightful place in the comity of nations. She must and will rise and shine in her God-sent power and glory.

    “She must and will become who and what the ancient oracles of the Living God have said she is: the Giant of Africa and the hope of the black man. We are Nigerians, sons and daughters of a great and powerful nation boasting of no less than 250 million God-loving and God-fearing people of different ethnic nationalities and religious faiths and bound together by destiny, faith and hope.

    “Our diversity is our pride and joy and our faith in God is our strong defender and our shield and buckler. Our collective travails, trials and tribulations are the fiery furnace in which our unity has been forever forged. The labours and sacrifices of our heroes past shall never be forgotten or in vain. They toiled, struggled and suffered and established a great and noble foundation that we may have a better tomorrow.

    “Our singular and sacred obligation and honorable duty before God is never to forget their sacrifices and to honor their memories by keeping hope alive and building on their great and noble legacy.”

    FFK’s supplications attracted a lot of feedback. While many respondents applauded his ‘spirituality’ and endlessly said ‘amen’ to his prayers, his critics didn’t spare him as they called him names and jeered at him.

  • Ex-senator’s governorship ambition under threat

    Ex-senator’s governorship ambition under threat

    The governorship ambition of a former National Assembly member in one of the states due to hold their off-season elections soon may be dead on arrival if feelers from his constituency and political associates are anything to go by.

    Sentry gathered that the former lawmaker is finding his governorship ambition very hard to sell on account of character, antecedents and failed promises he made to his constituents before winning elections into the National Assembly, first as a member of the House of Representatives and then as a senator.

    In the warm-up to the election that took him to the House, the ex-Senator was said to have struck a deal with opinion leaders in his constituency to ensure the reconstruction of a section of the Kabba-Ilorin highway and ensure the conversion of a big river within the constituency into a dam that would meet the water needs of the local population.

    But while the ex-senator gave his word that the two projects would be achieved once he was voted into the House of Reps, he did nothing about them in the four years he spent as a federal lawmaker.

    His constituents, it was gathered, were not only miffed by the disappointment the ex-lawmaker meted out to them, they felt highly embarrassed at the cantankerous manner he conducted himself during official sessions at the lower chamber of the National Assembly.

    “We were always highly embarrassed to have him as our representative each time he engaged in physical combat with other members of the House and generally spearhead the rowdiness for which the House became known while he was there,” a member of his constituency said.

    “He managed to return to the National Assembly as a senator after all the embarrassment he gave us because he practically bought his party’s ticket and deployed his thugs to scare voters away with guns on Election Day.

    “But as fate would have it, the way elections are conducted now is different. With the invention of BVAS (bimodal voter accreditation system), it will be difficult for him to win elections with the use of his thugs to snatch ballot boxes.

    “I believe that his governorship ambition cannot fly because many of us believe that it is payback time. Even if he picks his party’s governorship ticket by any stroke of luck, the voting population will be waiting to have their own pound of flesh.”

    The source added that many of the ex-senator’s constituents are also not happy with him because of the way he openly antagonised the President-Elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, before, during and after the just concluded presidential election.

    “He knew quite well that Asiwaju (Tinubu) was the popular choice of his kinsmen, but he seized every opportunity at his disposal to rubbish Tinubu’s person before and after the election as he turned himself into the attack dog of another presidential candidate.

    “We will now see how he will become governor in Kogi State without the support of the people that voted massively for Tinubu in the state,” the source added.

  • Southeast in half-hearted push for Senate President

    Southeast in half-hearted push for Senate President

    THE 2023 elections have come and gone with winners savouring the joy of victory and losers nursing the wounds of defeat. But after the general election comes the sharing of offices at the two chambers of the National Assembly as well as the state houses of assembly.

    In the House of Representatives, for instance, there are no fewer than nine aspirants for the coveted seat of the Speaker, which is about to be vacated by the present occupant of the seat, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila. At the Senate, on the other hand, there are no fewer than seven known jostlers for the seat of the Senate President occupied at the moment by Senator Ahmad Lawan.

    In both cases, the tradition is to zone the various offices to the six geopolitical zones that make up the nation, namely the Southwest, Southeast, Northwest, Northeast, North-Central and South-South.

    Of the six geo-political zones, the Southeast appears the most disadvantaged in terms of prospects for clinching the coveted seats of Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives on account of the zone being the poorest contributor to the success of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the presidential election.

    For the seat of the Speaker for instance, the zone has only one candidate in Benjamin Kalu while in the Senate there are three aspirants, namely Senator Orji Uzo Kalu, who is currently the Chief Whip of the upper legislative chamber; Senator Osita Izunazo and the newly elected senator and sitting governor of Ebonyi State, Dave Umahi.

    The aspirations of the aforementioned individuals have, however, been mostly half-hearted because they are conscious of their disadvantaged position in terms of their zone’s performance for APC in the elections.

    In the race for the Senate President’s seat, Kalu became the first to come all out to announce his interest in the coveted seat and even visited President Muhammadu Buhari at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa to formally declare his intention. He, however, wasted no time in revealing to the reporters who accosted him at the villa how much seriousness he attaches to his avowed aspiration, saying that he would step down if the President-elect asked him to.

    The prospects are not better for Umahi, given that he will be going into the Senate for the first time while the seat of the Senate President is reserved only for ranking senators. On his part, Izunazo, though a ranking senator, political observers believe he has neither the clout nor the stature to occupy the seat.

    The foregoing factors considered, observers believe that the South-South is better positioned for the Senate President’s seat in terms of the votes they contributed and the number of APC senators produced by the zone.

  • How Dogara dribbled self into irrelevance

    How Dogara dribbled self into irrelevance

    Not a few mouths were agape when former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, defected from PDP to APC like a bolt from the blue in July 2020.

    His sudden change of camp to the party he had previously defected from left tongues wagging as to the motive behind his unprovoked move.

    It would later be revealed by observers that the former Speaker’s move might have been informed by his calculation that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, whose presidential ambition had become an open secret, would be needing a prominent Christian from the north as his running mate, and no one would fit the bill better than a former number four man in Nigeria’s power hierarchy.

    It turned out, however, that he was overlooked by Tinubu in the latter’s choice of a running mate as he opted for Kashim Shettima, a Muslim and former governor of Borno State, following the candidate’s resolve to place merit above religious sentiments.

    Seeing his dream of picking the APC ticket for the Vice Presidential role crumble like a pack of cards, Dogara wasted no time jumping back to the PDP to support the ambition of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and launch a serious campaign against Tinubu and Shettima’s same-faith tickets.

    His support for Atiku, however, turned out a gross miscalculation as Tinubu and Shettima won the presidential election. Dogara’s hope of making up for his loss at the centre by pitching his tent with the seemingly popular APC governorship candidate in his state against the candidate of his party also turned out another big miscalculation.

    Like his preferred presidential candidate, the governorship candidate he supported also lost with the result that the former Speaker is now irrelevant both at the centre and in his state.

  • 2023 elections: Mbaka leads church leaders’ plea for forgiveness

    2023 elections: Mbaka leads church leaders’ plea for forgiveness

    A major highlight of the just-concluded general election was the failure of church leaders to secure victory for the presidential candidate many of them openly supported in their grandstanding against the so-called Muslim-Muslim ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) that featured Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and his running mate, Alhaji Kashim Shettima.

    The church leaders had described APC’s choice of two Muslims as its flagbearers in the presidential election as an affront on Christianity. Tinubu and the party’s explanation that the ticket was a child of necessity and was never intended to slight the Christian community did nothing to assuage the anger of the clerics as they vowed to ensure their followers didn’t vote for the ruling party’s candidates.

    To make good their threat, the leaders, particularly those of Catholic and Pentecostal churches, threw caution to the wind in their partisan support for a particular presidential candidate who one Pentecostal pastor said would win because his name was in the bible. They did not only instruct their members to line up behind the candidate in question but also yielded their pulpits to him to address their congregations.

    In a particular instance, a member of one of the churches in the Southeast became an instant sensation on the social media following the ovation that greeted her decision to shout the name of the presidential candidate in question instead of the usual ‘praise the Lord!’

    As it turned out, reality dawned on the partisan church leaders that they did not have the numbers when the results of the presidential election held on February 25 were released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Tinubu, who headed the so-called Muslim-Muslim ticket emerged the clear winner while the candidate the church leaders rooted for didn’t even come second!

    The thoroughly embarrassed church leaders, many of whom had claimed to hear from God that their preferred candidate would win, were left to lick the wounds of defeat for the third consecutive time since their open support for former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015.

    The awkward condition the church leaders now find themselves was not lost on popular Catholic priest and Spiritual Director of the Adoration Ministry, Enugu, Rev Father Camillus Ejike Mbaka, who in one of his ministrations during the week called on Nigerian church leaders to beg God for forgiveness over the mess they made of Christianity during the just concluded elections.

    The Rev Father also took it upon himself to kneel down before the altar in his church to plead for God’s mercy on behalf of Nigerian pastors and bishops for the unrestrained conduct of many during the elections.

  • Where is Aminu Tambuwal?

    Where is Aminu Tambuwal?

    If ever there is a politician who qualifies to be called a chameleon, it would be Sokoto State Governor, Alhaji Aminu Tambuwal.

    Even the former Speaker of the House of Representatives himself must have lost count of the frequency with which he swings between parties, particularly the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), in pursuit of his ambitions.

    But it would seem that he has finally done himself in with the results of the just-concluded elections in his state.

    The usually loud politician has recoiled into his shell since his anointed candidate and flagbearer of the PDP, Umar Saidu, lost the governorship election to the candidate of the opposition APC, Ahmad Aliyu.

    To worsen matters, the outgoing governor’s bid for the Senate seat is looking more and more like a mirage, prompting many observers to conclude that he might have done himself in with his political gymnastics.

  • Senator’s leadership bid faces fresh hurdle

    Senator’s leadership bid faces fresh hurdle

    WITH the general elections concluded and the All Progressives Congress (APC) winning the presidential election, the battle for political offices other than the president and the vice president has begun in the ruling party.

    Of particular interest to top ranking party members is the number three position, namely the Senate President, which a popular politician from the Southeast is said to be desperate about.

    The politician in question is said to be going round the country to seek support from anyone he believes could help him to realise his bid for the exalted office.

    There is, however, a twist that could see the ambition of the senator crumble like a pack of cards following underground campaigns by some members of the upper legislative chamber that the rules be changed to make it possible for non-ranking senators to contest the coveted seat.

    The implication of this is that the door may now be open to some newly elected senators from the Southeast and the South-South regions of the country considered by many as better materials for the seat to throw their hats in the ring.

    The new development is bound to compound the plight of the Southeast senator whose image many of his kinsmen have already opposed because they fear that his character is not something the people of his region would be proud of to have him as their highest representative in government.

    Candidate rains  curses as governorship ambition crumbles

    THE governorship and House of Assembly elections have come and gone, leaving winners to savour the joy of victory and losers to lick the wounds of defeat.

    But an aspirant whose wounds would take a long time to heal is one who was said to have spent billions of naira in pursuit of his governorship ambition only to fall short of victory.

    Frustrated not just by the loss of the election but by the gaping hole his ambition left in his pocket at the end of the race, the wealthy politician was said to have rained curses on his rival who emerged victorious in the election as well as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

    His frustration was said to have been compounded by saucy voters, some of whom were beneficiaries of the N10,000 he allegedly paid per vote, as they launched into a song in mockery of the politician, saying: Owo wogbo-o, owo wogbo, ten, ten thousand, owo wogbo, meaning in Yoruba language that the N10,000 the politician paid per vote had gone down the drain.

  • Lagos’ Labour Party and its vengeful ‘ghost’

    Lagos’ Labour Party and its vengeful ‘ghost’

    IN mythology and folklore, a vengeful ghost is said to be the spirit of a dead person who returns to seek revenge for injustice it suffered. Usually, the dead is long buried and sometimes forgotten. Such ghosts have the habit of choosing crucial moments in the lives of their traducers to return with the cry for justice. Usually, too, their activities do a lot of damage to the interests of their victims.

    Ahead of today’s gubernatorial election in Lagos State, Professor Ifagbemi Awamaridi, a former state chairman of the Labour Party (LP) has proven to be the equivalent of a vengeful ghost seeking to punish the party for the wrongs allegedly meted to him during the LP governorship primary election last year. Only that Awamaridi, who describes himself as the authentic governorship candidate is not dead. He is very much alive and kicking hard at the jugular of his party.

    Awamaridi has refused to bow to the party’s decision to put forward Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour as its flagbearer. He instituted several cases in court over the exclusion of his name from the list of those contesting the governorship election today. And like the mythical vengeful ghost, he appeared to have chosen the last couple of weeks before the Election Day to shout the most over “the tricky manner the LP ticket was taken from me and handed over to a ‘stranger’ who was never a member of the party.”

    As late as last Thursday, at a news briefing to round off his electioneering campaign, Awamaridi accused some party leaders of selling the soul of the party to ‘foreigners’ and godfathers, adding that he never withdrew from the race as claimed by some national leaders of the party. He said that he was the bonafide flagbearer, having emerged winner in the July 2022 primary. He said that his name was forwarded to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) by the party’s leadership.

    Awamaridi said he had written INEC that he had not withdrawn from the race, adding that a candidate could only drop out on a signed Letter of Oath or Form 11B of INEC. He said that the party was trying to change a lot of things in the country and INEC irregularities would not be excluded. He alleged that LP had issues of forged documents in 22 states, including Edo and Ebonyi , in connivance with some INEC officials. He, therefore, urged the Nigeria Police to look into the issue of forged documents by some national officers and charge them to court. According to the professor, the matter of his candidacy is before the Supreme Court.

    Sentry gathered that several efforts have been made to pacify the former party boss who is also the National Coordinator, Labour Party Concerned Stakeholders, to no avail. He is said to have vowed not to be placated until Rhodes-Vivour’s name is removed from the list of governorship candidates. Even after today’s election, he has promised to continue his objections and litigations against the candidate.

  • ‘Ajemonu’ syndrome rocks political space

    ‘Ajemonu’ syndrome rocks political space

    The expensive nature of politics is not in dispute anywhere in the world. From picking the ticket of a party in a primary election to mobilising supporters during campaign rallies and getting them out to vote on Election Day involves a lot of money.

    Most candidates contesting elections to become president, governor or legislator realise that much and are often prepared to dole out the cash to the electorate. Many if not most of them have, however, had to contend with the greed of their foot soldiers who are in the habit of shortchanging would-be voters by diverting the funds into their personal pockets. These foot soldiers see such disbursements as their entitlements and therefore pocket everything. In local parlance, it is called ‘chop and clean mouth’, but to the Yoruba, it is ‘ajemonu’

    The current electioneering dispensation has not been an exemption with tales of top officials of government and party executives sitting on huge sums dispensed by candidates for campaigns and the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections.

    In many states, tales of such confiscation or conversion or misapplication have unsettled many public officials, party executives, community and opinion leaders, as well as mobilisers. Some people in privileged positions who knew what transpired said the disclosures were highly revealing.

    In Katisna State, for instance, two top officials of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have been dragged to court over alleged mismanagement and diversion of the sum of N2 billion assigned for the just concluded presidential and National Assembly elections in the state.

    In an ex-parte motion filed at the Katsina State High Court by the state and local government chairmen of the party, they are praying the court to compel the accused duo to account for the more than N1.05 billion of the N2 billion assigned by the party’s presidential candidate during the elections.

    The ugly phenomenon now tagged by concerned political observers as ‘ajemonu syndrome’ is by no means restricted to the PDP as many candidates across party lines have suffered the same fate with avoidable defeats as the ultimate consequence.

    Naira swap debacle:  Way out for banking public

    MORE than one week after the Supreme Court judgment extending the legal tender status of the old naira notes till December 31, there seems to be no end in sight to the suffering that the poorly executed naira redesigning policy has foisted on the citizenry.

    In spite of the apex court judgment that the old N500 and N1000 notes are legal tenders until December 31, most Nigerians are avoiding them like leprosy because the Presidency, the office of the Attorney General of the Federation, and the CBN have all refused to admit the judgment or even comment on it.

    Whereas in other climes the Supreme Court judgment would automatically translate to acceptance of the old notes as legal tenders, most individuals and organizations, including banks, are insisting that Buhari or Emefiele must pronounce them acceptable before they are regarded legal tenders.

    Sometime during the week, a reporter with a Lagos newspaper took some of the notes to a branch of a popular bank in Lagos to deposit in his account, but the bank’s officials refused and asked him to take them to the CBN. The reporter reminded the officials of the Supreme Court judgment extending their legal tender status till December 31 but they stood their ground.

    He then brought out his identity card, flashed it at the bank officials and told them that he would report in his paper their refusal to accept the notes and then sue the bank.

    On hearing this, the officials asked him to allow them consult their manager. Not long after, the manager invited the journalist, explained to him their constraints as bankers and urged him to bear with them. “You know we are being regulated by the CBN, we are under authority,” they explained. “l don’t care the authority you obey, constituted or otherwise. The Supreme Court has ruled; that’s now the law, “the reporter fired back. Seeing the no-nonsense disposition of the reporter, the manager then asked that the money be accepted and lodged in his account.

    Lesson: The banking public can compel compliance through the court since those who should act have refused to do so, and again contemptuous of the Supreme Court.

    Crack in OBIdient  movement

    THE presidential election has come and gone with the winner savouring the joy of victory and the losers nursing the pains of defeat. For the presidential candidate of Labour Party Mr Peter Obi and his supporters, signs of disagreement are beginning to show on the next direction of the party after the collapse of their dream for Obi’s presidency.

    Gathering a total of 6,101,533 votes in the election, Obi had come third in the election behind the winner, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) who scored 8,794,726 votes and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar who came second with 6,984,520 votes.

    As the parties prepare for the governorship and House of Assembly elections scheduled for next Saturday, however, the centre appears not to be holding for the Labour Party as some members appear to have made up their mind to dump the party’s candidates for others.

    One of the points of disagreement is the governorship race in Enugu State where Obi and a prominent supporter of Labour Party, Aisha Yesufu, have disagreed on their choice of governorship candidate. While Obi is rooting for Chijoke Edeoga, the governorship candidate of Labour Party in the state, Yesufu would not have any of that and has pitched her tent with Frank Nweke Jnr, the candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), saying that her choice of Nweke was based on competence.

    In a post on his Twitter account on Wednesday, Obi had written: “As we pursue due process and defer to the rule of law, I urge all the OBIdients in the various states to continue campaigning for our candidates, namely Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour in Lagos, Chijioke Edeoga in Enugu…”

    But Aisha promptly responded saying: “God forbid I become what I want to change. I can never sacrifice competence for partisanship! Frank Nweke Jnr is the person for Enugu State. The people must be the winners and not individuals.”

    The development, SENTRY gathered, is already dividing the party into camps. In Rivers state, the executives have endorsed the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and directed those who voted for Obi on February 25 to cast their votes for the PDP candidate. The national executive of LP dissociated itself from the action and dissolved the Rivers state executive. The question many analysts are asking is: can Obi hold the party together post May 29?

    New vocation for Atiku’s man

    NIGERIANS woke up on Monday to the spectacle of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar leading a protest at the office of the Independent National Electoral Commission in Abuja against the result of the just concluded presidential election.

    Atiku, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the election, had come second behind the winner, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), gathering 6,984,520 votes against Tinubu’s 8,794,726.

    It has since come to light that the crowd that protested in Abuja was far from being a spontaneous gathering of aggrieved minds. SENTRY reliably gathered that the task of recruiting them was undertaken by a former senator.

    The ex-senator and associate of the ex-VP was said to have deployed his proficiency in Hausa language to recruit many of the protesters from the slums of Abuja for a token.

    Those who think the querulous senator would be jobless after Atiku’s failed project would be disappointed. He has returned to his vocation: recruiting crowds for special events. When one door closes, they say, another opens.

  • The return of ‘Weeping Jeremiah’

    The return of ‘Weeping Jeremiah’

    In the Second Republic, the late former Imo State governor, Chief Sam Mbakwe was nicknamed the weeping Jeremiah of Imo on account of his emotional exhibition each time he felt that things were not going well for his people.

    Not a few people’s memories of the deceased former governor were rekindled on Thursday as the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr Peter Obi, broke down in tears during a press conference he addressed about his plan to challenge the election of his counterpart in the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu‘s election in court.

    Speaking at the news conference in Abuja, an visibly devastated Obi said his party would follow all available legal and peaceful procedures to reclaim his mandate.