The Nation Newspaper

Tag: leaders’

  • Computer traders allege violation of constitution by leaders

    Members of the Computer and Allied Products Association of Nigeria (CAPDAN) have accused their leaders of violating their constitution.

    They said no election has been held in 10 years, which, according to them, is contrary to their constitution’s provision that there must be new leaders every four years.

    The traders alleged the tenure of the Ibrahim Tunji-led executive had since elapsed but the officers have remained in office in breach of their rules.

    They marched on the Computer Village in Ikeja, Lagos, and adjourning streets, bearing placards, some of which read: “Election must hold now!” “Saving the market is a must” “12 years in office is a slap!” “In credible election we believe, not selection!” “We need a change now!” among others.

    The traders urged the association’s board of trustees to “put a mechanism in motion” towards holding an election, saying: “We request that an Electoral Committee should be constituted immediately to enable them publish the election modalities as well as manage the electoral process.”

    A founding CAPDAN executive member, Mrs Abisola Isokpehi said another election is long overdue. Her words: “Why won’t a change be necessary in 10 years? Have you heard that a set of executives will be in office for 10 years? I’m one of the ‘excos’. We don’t call meetings, nothing; just two or three people parading themselves as CAPDAN executive officers and doing things we don’t know about. But that’s beside the point. How can we be in power for 10 years? As I speak we don’t even have an office or a secretariat. I am ready to let go as the auditor if an election will hold.”

    One of traders, Bayo Olawunmi, said: “Nobody is happy with the way the market is being run. All the stakeholders are complaining. They feel the present executives are not doing enough and they want a change. Up till this moment, no election of transition committee has been constituted.

    “We’re urging the state government to intervene. The Constitution says after four years, there must be an election, but none has been held for over 10 years. We need a lot of changes to be effected because the market is not well-regulated. We have a bad name of selling fake products because of lack of proper regulation and we are losing customers,” he said.

    However, CAPDAN’s Board of Trustees’ chairman Mr Ganiyu Alimi said arrangements were on to hold an election soon.

    “We had started the process before this agitation by the traders. We plan to appoint a caretaker committee. The president actually said he has stepped aside, giving room for an election to hold.

    “Before any credible election is held, there must be a new roster of members. That’s why we’re saying there should be a committee that will be in place to arrange these things. It is not automatic. Ask these people to show you their membership cards, many of them cannot,” he said.

  • Leaders for Ondo JCC

    The Ondo State chapter of Joint Campus Committee (JCC), an arm of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), has elected leaders.

    The election took place during the convention held at Ondo State Co-operative College in Akure on Wednesday. The exercise, which was supposed to be held on Sunday at the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), was shifted to Wednesday because of the fracas among contenders.

    Before the election, chairman of the electoral committee, Comrade Daniju Olusola, urged all delegates to be peaceful and orderly. He promised that the committee would be fair to all candidates. All the nine Students’ Union presidents in institutions in the state voted for all candidates.

    After the poll, Odunayo Kowe, a student of the Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko (AAUA), was returned as president-elect, while Samson Falegan, FUTA student, became the vice president-elect.

    Others are Toluwalaje Akindusoye, General Secretary, Omotolani Williams, Assistant General Secretary, Emmanuel Baale, Treasurer and Sunday Oladapo, Public Relations Officer.

    Samson said the new leadership would promote the welfare of students across institutions in the state, inviting opponents to work with the new administration.

    Akinomotomiwa Ayepada, Students’ Union president of Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo (RUGIPO), moved a motion for the postponement of election of Director of Gender and the senate because of candidates’ absence.

    Students at the convention urged the new executive members to protect the interest of students rather than being use by politicians to satisfy their purpose of winning elections.

  • IBB varsity gets students’ leaders

    IBB varsity gets students’ leaders

    The Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University (IBBU), Lapai, has inaugurated the Students Union Government (SUG) executive The event took place at the university twin lecture theatre.

    At the event the university’s Legal Adviser, Amina Ndayako, urged the officers to always abide by the rules.

    The president, Bashir Shuaibu administered the oath of office on members of the Students’ Representatives Council (SRC), a legislative arm of the union.

    Shuaibu, praised the management for conducting a credible election, calling on his fellow leaders to join him to continue the struggle for students’ welfare.

    “I salute the courage and spirit of togetherness in this very great institution and the trust the entire students have in me. Our victory was a well-deserved one. I urge all stakeholders, comrades in struggle, NASU, ASUU and SSANU to please join hands with us to fight for the rights of students,” he stated.

    The Vice Chancellor, who was represented by the Deputy VC (Administration), Dr Yakubu Auna, praised the students’ affairs division and the computer science department of the university for organising the e-voting.

    He congratulated the new executives and charged them to imbibe the spirit of transparency. He said:  “It is not always easy and convenient to be a union leader, but it is necessary to serve because, service to humanity is one of the basis of human existence. “

    The Dean of Students’ Affairs, Dr John Jiya, also congratulated the new leaders and students for their peaceful conduct during and after the elections.

  • Northern leaders responsible for North’s woes, says Shehu Sani

    Northern leaders responsible for North’s woes, says Shehu Sani

    Northern leaders are responsible for 70 per cent of the North’s woes, President of the Civil Rights Congress Comrade Shehu Sani said at the weekend.

    He said the President Goodluck Jonathan administration was responsible for the remaining 30 per cent of the region’s problems.

    Sani spoke in Kaduna when he visited unpaid workers of the closed Kaduna Textile Limited (KTL).

    He said northern leaders had the opportunity to industrialise the region but failed to do so when they were at the helm of affairs.

    The activist said the North could live without oil revenue, if it revived textile industries and agriculture, and invested in solid minerals, adding that the possibility of exploring oil from the North is “indispensable”.

    He said: “The northern part of Nigeria has been destroyed 70 per cent by northern leaders and 30 per cent by the Jonathan administration. Northern leaders had the opportunity to industrialise, educate and uplift the region, but they have left behind a region that is backward and whose future is in doubt.

    “For over three decades when northerners were in power, they used the opportunity to empower traditional rulers and make the rich richer. But what is very clear is that northern Nigeria can live without oil revenue. What it needs are political leaders, who understand the reality of change that is fast taking place in Nigeria and the world, and the need to harness the resources of the North for the development of its people.

    “It is time for northern political leaders to sit down and devote more energy to the economic revival and empowerment of the region as much as they devote energy to the political future of the rich.

    “The textile industry has been destroyed by years of neglect by successive governments and political leaders in the North. Northern Nigeria has a lot to deliver to its people. The need to revive the textile industries and agriculture, invest in solid minerals and the possibility of exploiting oil from the North is indispensable.”

  • Who says youths are leaders of tomorrow?

    SIR: Young people are part of the bouquet of a society. They are an integral and essential part of a society; they offer that specific aroma of theirs which complements the societal wholeness. Young people cannot survive without a society, and a society in turn is incomplete without their belligerence. That informs the cliché, “Nigerian youths are the leaders of tomorrow”.

    I wonder why the term has become so unrealistic and impossible to attain. Today, unemployment has not only ravaged our young minds, the future is particularly bleak.

    I hear stentorian activists make speeches about on how women can serve if given 35 percent opportunity. What about the youths?

    Being a leader tomorrow requires a vision today, and this vision today must be put to work for full actualization. This used to be the case until tomorrow turned to horror. When the vision of being a leader seems to have completely dwindled yesterday and now today – we are left like sheep without shepherd. It seems everything we had envisaged have fizzled.

    In 1985, IBB was the president and our teachers told us that Buhari was the former Head of state. Then, our teacher also called us “the leaders of tomorrow”. Twenty-seven years later, IBB and Buhari are still around the scene. Its either our teacher lied to us about being the leaders of tomorrow, or that tomorrow is yet to come. Who’s fooling who?

    In a country like ours, it is dispiriting to think what the future holds, when as blessed as we are, what has befallen us is regression.

    Imagine; in 1983, Bamanga Tukur was Governor of the defunct Gongola State (now Adamawa and Taraba). Thirty years later, he would emerge as chairman of the ruling party, PDP. Dr. Bello Halliru was commissioner in the Old Sokoto State (now Sokoto, Kebbi and Zamfara) only to become Minister of Defence 33 years after. Major General David Mark (rtd) was military governor of Niger State in 1984 and now he is Senate President more than 28 years after. The same goes for ex-Governor Murtala Nyako, who was governor of Niger State in 1976.  Until his impeachment recently, he was Governor of Adamawa State – 36 years after.

    What then can we do? Recently some states are passing bills against peaceful demonstrations – their trick to bamboozle the many for their pound of flesh. These peter pans would employ many ways to make sure the youths peter out, if their egregious activities keep being challenged as mascots.

    Only in Nigeria is this possible. A place where the youth have no hope of the future, where the health sector, labour, judiciary and education are perennially on strike.

    The question is – if youths have not prepared themselves sufficiently today, how can anyone say that the future will be bright?

    Let all hands be on deck, if we must escape these shackles and wade into the future as leaders.

     

    •Onwa Franklin Chukwuemeka,

    Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Imo State.

  • Kumuyi urges voters to choose credible leaders in 2015

    Kumuyi urges voters to choose credible leaders in 2015

    The General Superintendent of the Deeper Life Bible Church, Pastor Folorunso Kumuyi, has urged voters to choose only credible leaders who will transform the country and make it great again.

    The cleric said voters need to vote “intelligently” in next year’s general elections to ensure that only credible people get their votes.

    Kumuyi spoke in Osogbo, the Osun State capital, when he visited Governor Rauf Aregbesola.

    The cleric noted that only credible leaders would make a difference in the lives of Nigerians.

    He also addressed reporters on the three-day “power-packed crusade” with the theme: Explosion of Supernatural Miracles, which was held at the weekend.

    Kumuyi said: “When we are going to cast our votes, we must vote intelligently. We know where we want to be as a country in various areas of development. The leaders who will get us to where we want are those we are going to cast our votes for at all levels.

    “We should also understand that many nations have their peculiar problems: some similar to ours, while some are different. But many of the countries have survived their challenges. I want to say with prayers and hope in God, we will get out of our problems.”

    The cleric scored Aregbesola high in the transformation of Osun State.

    He said Aregbesola’s leadership style had translated to the vast development of the state.

    He said: “We thank God for the progress we have seen in this state. We have seen that a lot has taken place in terms of transformation under Ogbeni Aregbesola.

  • Leaders, not Jonathan, failed the North

    Leaders, not Jonathan, failed the North

    SIR: In this centennial season of blame game over everything that has gone wrong with Nigeria since 1914, it is not surprising that President Goodluck Jonathan has become the whipping boy.  But while it is justifiable to criticise the President fairly for what he does or does not do, that does not confer on any person or group of persons the right to distort facts, misinform the people and accuse him of  offences, which even a day-old baby can exonerate him from.  It is in this category that the wicked accusations of Alhaji Ibrahim Coomasie and his Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) fall.  According to the ACF, President Jonathan has not only failed the North but also hates our people from the North.

    To face the issues raised by Coomasies’s ACF, it is not true that President Jonathan has failed in protecting the North.  If anything, it is some northern leaders like Coomasie that have failed the region. Although many scholars and strategists have given many reasons for the emergence of the deadly insurgence in the North, an eclectic position is that bad leadership that manifestly impoverished the people of the area of a long period of time is one certain factor.

    For many years, northern elite wielded power and did absolutely nothing to improve the access and quality of education in the region. And neither did they build a culture of enterprise and industry there. Instead, what they promoted was personal wealth at the expense of the people, rural and mass poverty that Boko Haram is feeding off for its recruitment.

    If Coomasie is weeping that the North has become divided politically today, how is that the problem of President Jonathan?  The concept of the monolithic North has always been problematic.  The high-handedness of people like Coomasie who hid under the banner of “one North” to promote a certain ethnic group while subjugating the others in a well-orchestrated internal colonialism policy has found them out.  The logic of democracy and the freedom that it inheres are responsible for the boldness that the hitherto subjugated peoples and groups in the North are displaying against an oligarchy that is slow in coming to terms with the reality of the modern Nigeria.

    Those who are nostalgic about the “unity” of the North are perhaps jittery to explain in whose interest this unity had been in the past.  If the monolithic North is disintegrating, it has nothing to do with the President. If anything, those now pointing fingers at different directions need to re-examine the power relations in the North and how much power had been put in the service of the ordinary people all these years.  If it takes an Ijaw man from Otuoke to improve the life chances of the ordinary citizens in the North who have borne the brunt of prebendal use of power by their own elite for many decades, who cares about the selfish moaning of Coomasie and his ACF?

    • Hamisu Abubakar,

    Kaduna

  • Vote for right leaders, youths advised

    A non-governmental Organisation (NGO), Green White Green Ambassadors, has urged the youth to vote for the right candidates  in spite of their political parties

    It  also advised them to stay away from crises in the general elections which hold next year.

    At a briefing in Agege, Lagos, President of the NGO, Saheed Olanrewaju Alani, said: What we want is unity in our country, we want the youth to vote for the right candidates, right leaders so that the nation will be a better place to live and remain the giant of Africa.

    “The youth should stay away from crises in the election. Many of the leaders’ children are abroad; so when they come to you, tell them to use their own children and not you,” he said

    “Admitting to transformation, the possibility of catapulting our great nation to the next level is a collective responsibility of all, especially the youth who are usually the bedrock for transforming any society to the next level; and that is why we operate through the following watchword: identify, connect and achieve,” he said.

    The group’s Secretary-General, Tunde Ogidan, also stressed that the youth have a role to play in nation building.

    “We have identified our problems; yet all we keep doing is war.We don’t want war of break up but sustain our integration with the help of the youth. We don’t want our coming generations to say we caused their problem the same way we have always said.

    “If I have the opportunity of meeting President Jonathan today, I will charge him to re-orientate the people’s mindset on Nigeria with creative ideas and our institutions must work. It is about perfecting the areas that is faulty, we want our country shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the world,” he added.

  • 2015: Only revolution can bring credible leaders, says Balarabe Musa

    2015: Only revolution can bring credible leaders, says Balarabe Musa

    A former governor of the old Kaduna State and National Chairman of the deregistered Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), Alhaji Balarabe Musa, has said the masses should prepare for a peaceful revolution for the 2015 general elections to be fair, free and credible.

    The former governor said only such a revolution would bring the exemplary leaders the people deserve.

    He noted that since the country’s political system had been hijacked by moneybags, the hope of the people getting credible leaders through their votes would remain a mirage.

    Musa spoke in Kaduna at the weekend after meeting with members of the National Executive Committee of the party to find alternative political strategies, following its deregistration by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

    The former governor said PRP would continue to fight for the cause of the downtrodden.

    He said: “I know Nigeria’s situation; it is impossible to have free, fair, credible and transparent elections leading to a democratic mandate. We need a revolution; we need a peaceful democratic revolution …to bring about the condition that will bring about free, fair, credible and transparent elections that will lead to legitimate leadership.

    “Let us be objective. Elections today are decided by three factors: money power, incumbency and balance terror. That was how elections were decided in Ekiti and Osun states. The ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) can do and undo with the people’s votes. So, a revolution is the answer, whether peaceful or otherwise.”

     

  • African leaders target 2025 to end hunger

    AFRICAN leaders have agreed to end hunger and cut poverty by half by 2025 through investments in agriculture, a statement by the African Press Organisation in Addis Ababa said.

    The statement signed by Mr Boaz Keizire, Head, Agriculture and Food Security, African Union and Ms Carol Jilombo, Department of Rural Economy and Agriculture, African Union Commission (AUC), was received online by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.

    It said the commitment was part of the resolutions reached at the recently-concluded 23rd Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union Heads of State and Government in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea.

    Tagged, the Malabo Declaration, African leaders declared their commitment to new priorities, strategies and targets around agriculture-led growth.

    These priorities, it said, were geared towards achieving food and nutrition security for shared prosperity of the African people.

    “African Heads of State have specifically agreed to end hunger in Africa by 2025, halve poverty by 2025 through inclusive agricultural growth and transformation.

    “They have also agreed to further increase both public and private investment finance in agriculture.

    “They agreed to boost intra-Africa trade in agricultural commodities and services, enhance resilience of livelihood, production systems to climate change variability and other related risks; while committing to mutual accountability to actions and results.

    “The leaders also renewed their commitment towards the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) process which pushes African leaders’ commitment towards a systematic regular review process, using the CAADP Results Framework.”