The Nation Newspaper

Tag: EAST

  • APC kicks as PDP wins Niger East by-election

    APC kicks as PDP wins Niger East by-election

    The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared Dr. Shem Zagbayi Nuhu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) winner of the Niger East Senatorial by-election.

    He defeated Mr David Umaru of the All Progressives Congress (APC) with 92,056 votes.

    Umaru had 87,405 votes.

    The by-election was first held on August 30 but was declared inconclusive, following irregularities in 21 polling stations across six of the nine local government areas in the district. A supplementary election was held last Saturday.

    The Returning Officer, Professor Wole Morenikeji, said the APC recorded 2,716 votes and the PDP 2,416 in the supplementary poll, but the PDP won the total number of votes.

    Morenikeji said Nuhu had 4,951 votes more than Umaru, adding that 8,042 votes were invalid.

    Governor Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu hailed the conduct of the election. Aliyu said the result was a reflection of the people’s confidence in the PDP.

    However, the APC rejected the result.

    Its Publicity Secretary, Mr. Jonathan Vatsa, said the party was studying the result.

    Vatsa said: “Though the party is yet to take a decision on the outcome of the by-election, I know that the result announced by INEC is not acceptable and in due course, the APC’s official position will be announced. The next line of action on the by-election will be taken after consultations at the state level. We are also in touch with the national headquarters of the party and our position will be made known.”

    The APC spokesman querried Aliyu’s statement that the people had confidence in the PDP.

    Vatsa said: “It is a known fact that the by-election was rigged by the PDP and INEC. It took a party that has been in power for over 15 years to use money to induce voters, use fake security agents to intimidate them and INEC to doctor the results.

    “It is sad that our governor, who presides over failed 10-kilometre road projects in each of the 25 local government areas and many other failed, inflated and abandoned projects, could say that the PDP is popular. The governor has no moral right to speak because he lost the last by-election in his unit, ward and local government. In fact, the governor has never won any election in his local government, ward and unit.”

     

  • Mid East clubs jostle for Ayodele

    Nigerian defender Lekan Ayodele might change clubs in the coming weeks as his representatives are presently holding high level discussions with a number of teams predominantly from the Middle East.

    The 22 – year – old is now on the books of  Shaab Ibb SCC, but from the look of things, he is unlikely to see out the last one year of his contract with the three – time Yemeni champions.

    Adeniran Adewale Joseph, the CEO of Shiba Sport, who represents the player, is in contact with clubs from Zambia, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan for a possible transfer in this window.

    “Al-Mabarrah, Lebanon are the frontrunners for his signature. But he is also wanted by Smouha Sporting Club FC in Egypt and teams in Jordan and Zambia.

    “Lekan  is a good professional defender and can play almost every role in the defense line and even move forward sometimes,” Adeniran Adewale Joseph said to allnigeriasoccer.com.

    Before Lekan Ayodele left these parts to sign for Shaab Ibb SCC in 2012, he defended the colours of Shiba Football Academy as well as 3SC Feeders.

  • Issuing ID card to Northerners in East, threat to Igbo investment in North —ACF

    Issuing ID card to Northerners in East, threat to Igbo investment in North —ACF

    The Northern socio-cultural group, Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), has warned that the ongoing controversy over the issuance identity cards to Nigerians of northern extraction in  in the Eastern part of the country could endanger the multi-billion naira investments of Igbo businessmen living in the north.

    It will be recalled that Northerners doing business in Imo State were allegedly being registered by the state government in preparation for issuing them identity cards, following the Boko Haram insurgency.

    The ACF also expressed the fear that the country may be envloped in crisis along ethnic lines if it decides to carry out a similar action against the Igbo who are resident in the north.

    While the forum maintained that there was nothing wrong with issuing identity cards, it condemned the plan to target a section of the country for the registration, stressing that everybody deserved the identity cards if it is done in good faith to achieve a goal.

    Addressing members of the South-South/South-East Arewa Coalition who paid a courtesy call on the ACF yesterday, the Deputy Secretary-General of the forum, Engineer Abubakar Umar said statistics available to the forum indicated that Igbos’ investments in Kaduna, Kano, and Jos alone amounted to N45 trillion.

    Umar said with such huge investments in just three states of the north, Easterners have no reason to maltreat northerners doing businesses in the east. He said:  “If the table turns round, it could be disastrous, as these investments may suffer for it. But we are praying for understanding among  Nigerians, for us to accept ourselves wherever we live to earn legitimate means of livehood.”

    He explained that Yoruba and Igbo people in Jos, capital of Plateau State, lost N480 billion and N410 billion investments respectively to the 2011 post election violence, adding that the South-South also lost N970 billion in the same crisis.

    “We know these statistics; we have these statistics, so we expect the Igbos to treat our kinsmen, our brothers and sisters in the East as kings and queens, in view of the fact that they (Igbos) have more investments in the north than in the East.

    “Take Abuja, the Federal capital territory, for example, Igbos occupy over 73 percent of the land, so these are some of the reasons why they should be everybody’s keepers in their place,”Umar said.

    Earlier, the leader of the Coalition, Mallam Awwal Yusuf, told the ACF that northerners were doing business in fear in the east, and called on the ACF to intervene, because, according to him, “every trader or Muslims from the north is considered a Boko Haram”.

    Yusuf said the Arewa Coalition has gone to court on the issue of identity card in order to seek justice and be freed from undue molestation in the hands of the people in the area.

    “We are so embarrassed with this issue of identity cards. Why should it be only traders or Muslims from the north that should be identified. We have taken the case to a court in Enugu and we are that the state governor, Sulivan Chime, is ready to help us by sending his lawyer to stand for us,” Yusuf said.

    In his closing remarks, the ACF Secretary-General, Col. John Ubah (rtd) reminded the visitors that the ACF was established to protect the north and its people, saying that whatever happened to any northerner anywhere was always considered a serious issue.

    Col. Ubah said, “It is very sad to brand our people as Boko Haram in the East. But we want to tell you that we have not been sleeping; we will go through the northern governors to address the issue.

  • Heading East? Chinese clubs want Ameobi

    Heading East? Chinese clubs want Ameobi

    Shola Ameobi is the  latest Premier League  player to be courted by clubs in China. Fresh from his World Cup exploits with Nigeria, the former Newcastle striker is a free agent and weighing up offers from home and abroad.

    Chinese clubs are willing to provide lucrative contracts but it’s not always easy convincing players to go. Guangzhou Evergrande, coached by Marcello Lippi last week signed Alberto Gilardino to join former West Ham forward Alessandro Diamanti.

    They have agreed to match his wages at Genoa plus bonuses which are understood to be around £4m a year. Guangzhou R and F made an approach for Ameobi in February and remain keen on the 32-year-old.

  • Audacious hope for Middle East peace

    It is a mark of how slim the chance of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become that the talks about talks that are soon to begin in Washington are the most hopeful development for some years. Few expect substantive progress to emerge from the discussions. There is little sign that the Israeli government will accept its 1967 borders as a starting point for negotiations, as Palestinian leaders have been insisting; in the occupied territories, it continues to build illegal settlements that it aims to annex to Israel as part of any deal.

    What has brought the parties to the table is not so much the prospect that talks might succeed as the advantages to be won by taking part. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must appear to engage with the Palestinians if it is to deflect international pressure to end its obstructionism. The Palestinian leadership receives a concession in the form of prisoner releases, and anyway has few alternative venues in which to press its demands. Meanwhile, having made the cause of Middle East peace his own, John Kerry, US secretary of state, needs to show some return on his frenzied diplomacy if he is to move it further up the agenda of his boss, President Barack Obama.

    It would be easy, therefore, to wax defeatist about Mr Kerry’s initiative. Certainly, without strong backing from the White House, he is in no position to offer the leadership in the Middle East that Mr Obama once promised but has failed to deliver. Still, a glimmer of hope is a precious thing. Historic change has sometimes been wrought from inauspicious beginnings, and, if Mr Kerry can lift the air of futility that now surrounds the peace process, even modest steps towards agreement could conceivably mark the beginning of progress that will one day come to look unstoppable.

    If that faint prospect is to be realised, others must do all they can to nurture it. Mr Obama’s capitulation over Israeli settlements – which he criticised in his Cairo speech in 2009, only to veto similar criticism at the UN Security Council in 2011 – has weakened his voice. But the squeals of protest in Tel Aviv that followed the EU’s recent decision to cut a small amount of European funding for Israeli entities on occupied Palestinian lands reveals a government sensitive to criticism from foreign quarters.

    Israel’s friends must use all their influence to ensure that this chance for peace, hard-won but slender, is seized.

    – Financial Times