Between Gov Ayo Fayose And Gov Nasir El-Rufai

By Abraham Ogbodo

I have an award for good governance to give and the choice of a winner is between Governors Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State and Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State. One is APC and the other PDP. On this alone, I am seeking to be properly guided in this difficult choice to escape the charge of partisanship. It will also be unwieldy if too many factors are loaded into the assessment. I have therefore limited the scope to recent happenings, like the way the two governors have engaged workers in their respective states. 

*Govs Fayose and El-Rufai

First, Kaduna State. Governor el-Rufai woke up one morning and sacked 22,000 primary school teachers in the state. Less than a week after and when the furor of the first massive sack had not settled, there was a follow up with the sack of more than 4,000 workers across the 23 local government councils in the state.

Altogether, some 26,000 persons were made jobless (and perhaps, homeless too) in less than two weeks. According to the governor, the sacked workers had been profiled and found to be grossly unfit for public sector operations in Kaduna State. Naturally, the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) failed to appreciate the argument of Governor el-Rufai that the 22,000 teachers failed basic test for competence and had become more of an affliction on than a solution to the pupils. The council workers were mainly sacked for redundancy.

Buhari’s Sack Of Maina An Afterthought – Gov Fayose

         Press Release

Ekiti State Governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose, has said the President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive for the immediate disengagement of former Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, Mr. Abdullahi Maina, is an afterthought.

*President Buhari 

He said the President only acted to save his face from the global embarrassment caused him by the outcry of Nigerians on the news of Maina’s reinstatement.

The governor demanded immediate arrest and trial of Maina as well as the dismissal of all those who perpetrated his reinstatement, which he described as fraudulent and shameful.

What’s Prof Osinbajo Not telling Us?

By Bolaji Tunji

The Vice and Acting President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, during the week paid a short visit to President Muhammadu Buhari. It was a very short visit which lasted less than 24 Hours. The man left the country on Tuesday and was back by Wednesday to preside over the Federal Executive a Council (FEC) meeting.

*Osinbajo

The Vice President’s visit is just one of the many visits to the President in recent time. The president’s wife, Aisha Buhari, had equally paid a visit to her husband including other prominent Nigerians, amidst rumours that the first lady had been shielded from seeing her husband during previous visits.

In all these, the story had been that the president was responding to treatment and would soon come back. This is contrary to information from the opposition figures that the President is on life support machine. Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, had said that the president was on life support machine. His statement was further amplified by former Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode.

Indeed, the Ekiti state governor went further to state that he would release some pictures of the president on life support machine to corroborate his claims.

Nigeria: Enough Of Blood-Letting!

By Gbemiga Olakunle

And God sent an Angel into Jerusalem to destroy it, and as he was destroying the LORD beheld and He repented Him of the evil, and said to the Angel that destroyed, it is enough, stay now thine hand. Chron. 21:15, KJV.

There is no doubt that violence has become the order of the day in Nigeria since the advent of Boko Haram in the Northeast and the increased militancy with some elements of criminality in the Southsouth. The situation has already been compounded and is getting worse by the day with the unprovoked attacks that are being unleashed on the citizens of this country by some rampaging herdsmen.

In Nigeria today, to know the real value of a cow, what a farmer needs to do is to kill just one for destroying his farmland. And he will be lucky if his whole community members are not compelled to pay dearly for such effrontery/audacity with their lives in form of reprisal attacks from the herdsmen.

Anybody who is still in doubt should please read the pathetic accounts of the Southern-Kaduna killings where nothing less than 808 people have been killed with several others injured and property worth of millions of naira destroyed. The affected communities were reportedly paying for the sins that their fathers allegedly committed against the cows of some herdsmen who were caught up in the riots that erupted in the aftermath of the 2011 Presidential Elections.

While the authorities, especially the Kaduna State Government are claiming that these assailants are foreigners, these merchants of death have continued to spread their unprovoked attacks to other parts of the country until the Governor of Ekiti State, Peter Ayodele Fayose, checkmated them in his own Area of Jurisdiction (AOR) and put a final halt to it through decisive actions including a legislation. On its own part in addressing the issue, the Nigerian Army has announced that it would send some of its personnel to Argentina to learn Animal husbandry with a view to acquiring suitable acres of land throughout the federation for the purpose of establishing ranches to raise cattle – a move that many have suspected to be another way of introducing the contentious Land Grazing Reserves Policy through the back door and riding on the back of the military.

Nigeria: DSS And The Politics Of Arrest

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

After President Muhammadu Buhari came into office in 2015, one of the measures he took seemingly to restore the professional integrity of the Department of State Services (DSS) was to overhaul it. The worry then was that the operatives of the security agency were politically exposed; a euphemism for the neglect of their professional duties while being steeped in corruption in the process of doing the bidding of politicians.

It was alleged then that at the height of their derailment, they were used to prosecute the re-election agenda of the former President Goodluck Jonathan in brazen violation of the rights of the citizens. Standing out of the alleged excesses of the DSS then was its raid on the office of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos. In the reorganisation, the leaders of the operatives were relieved of their jobs.

Thus, the citizens expected that a new DSS would emerge in the Buhari era. They expected a DSS that does its job professionally; operating with respect for the rights of the citizens. But in less than two years, the citizens have come to the grim realisation that this expectation is misplaced. This is because despite its so-called transformation, the DSS has not changed its crude method of operation.

One major area in which the DSS has failed to show that it is now a different organisation is in the arrest of suspects. It is puzzling why the DSS has demonstrated a proclivity for nocturnal arrest. We would have thought the DSS would simply invite a citizen to its office if he or she has questions to answer. It is only when the person fails that the agency may raid his or her residence any time. But what we see today is that the DSS arrests in the dead of the night people who would not have resisted its summonses. In this regard, the DSS shot into infamy through the nocturnal raid of judges. This method is fraught with many dangers. In the case of the arrest of the judges in Rivers State, the state governor had to intervene. If there were no sufficient caution by both parties, there would have been tragic consequences. The common reason given for such nocturnal arrest is that it enables the DSS to secure incriminating evidence before it is destroyed by suspects.

It is the same nocturnal method of arrest that the DSS also tried to use against Apostle Johnson Suleman. It was said that around 2:00 a.m. the DSS operatives raided the hotel room of the preacher who was in Ekiti for a crusade. But the timely intervention of Governor Ayodele Fayose saved him from being arrested. Still, this arrest could have been tragic. The governor’s armed guards could have confronted the DSS operatives. But thankfully, the DSS operatives fled when they saw Fayose and his team.

Buhari: Hater Of Women, President From The Dark Ages!

By Femi Fani-Kayode

"Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no evil for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me"- Psalm 23. 

I recited this scripture three times and waited on the Lord quietly and calmly when I heard that my wife and son had been unlawfully apprehended and detained in a bank in far away Ado Ekiti on the orders of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) whilst I was in Lagos. 

 Somebody should tell President Muhammadu Buhari to stop sending his goons to abduct other peoples’ wives and eight month old infant babies and to stop trying to traumatise them, lock them up and destroy their lives simply because they are married to or fathered by opposition politicians and those he hates. 

He should leave my wife Precious Chikwendu, my eight month old son, Aragorn, and other members of my family alone, face me directly and be a man. Even in war the wives and children of the enemy are out of bounds. 

The truth is that Buhari is nothing more than a coward and a bully and he will suffer the consequences of his actions because God will punish him. 

I give thanks to the Living God, the fearless lion that is known as Governor Ayo Fayose and the good people of Ado Ekiti for saving the lives of my loved ones and protecting them from the barbaric and illegal actions and tyranny of the fascists of the EFCC. 

I have nothing but contempt for these people. They are the scum of the earth and by the time this is all over they will know that I serve a mighty God.

Despite the threats, persecution, violence and intimidation that my family and I have been subjected to over the last one year my opposition to the Buhari government remains implacable and unrelenting and I refuse to be silenced.

I said that Buhari was an evil man right from the outset and that he would prove to be an incompetent and disastrous President if elected into office and I have been proved right. 

If he and his security forces are not killing Shiite Muslims, marginalising Christians, silencing and intimidating critics, locking up members of the opposition, storming the homes of judges or threatening bloggers and journalists they are sponsoring Fulani militants and herdsmen to commit acts of barbarity and terror against their fellow Nigerians. 

If they are not impoverishing Nigerians, decimating the economy or freezing the bank accounts of innocent men and women and their family members they are tormenting, abducting and locking up the wives, infants and babies of opposition figures. 

If they are not intimidating and charging leaders of the Senate and other senior legislators to court on trumped up charges, murdering IPOB youths, butchering Niger Deltans, humiliating and cheating their own party leaders or discrediting and jailing dissenters they are denigrating women and confining them to the kitchen and bedroom. 

Buhari has divided our country along ethnic, religious and regional lines as never before and he has subjected the Nigerian people to levels of starvation, deprivation, poverty and suffering that were hitherto unknown. 

And it is not just southerners and Christians that are feeling the pinch and suffering the pain and affliction. Millions of northern Muslims are feeling it as well. If anyone doubts that I challenge Buhari to walk the streets of Kano today and see what happens.

One wonders how things got so bad? One wonders what engendered this terrible affliction and what attracted this deep-rooted curse of a government? 

Fulani Herdsmen: Fayose Bells The Cat

By Bola Bolawole

Governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, has trod where angels would fear to tread: he has banned the medieval practice of grazing cattle all over the place in the state. He has promised to send draft legislation to this effect to the state House of Assembly to be passed into law. When this is done, both cattle and herdsmen caught on the wrong side of the law will be sanctioned. The beasts will be confiscated while the herdsmen will cool their heels in goal.

*Gov Ayodele Fayose 

Not only is the practice of itinerant rearing of cattle archaic, it also negates the giant strides that Mankind has made from the Stone Age. Grazing cattle in an unruly and unorganised manner over farmlands, destroying the means of livelihood of law-abiding citizens and trampling their inalienable rights is an affront to the legal order and an unwarranted assault on those at the receiving end of the bestiality of both beast and herdsman.

All over the country are strident cries against the callousness of the herdsmen who not only feed their cattle on, and as a result destroy, farmlands, thereby complicating the problem of skyrocketing prices of foodstuffs in the land; they also main, rape, and kill innocent indigenes of the communities they traduce to the bargain. They kidnap and torture, they demand and collect ransoms before releasing their victims. Most times, the victims still get killed even after ransoms have been paid.

Cattles have been known to cause fatal accidents on the highways. The increasing wave of armed robbery attacks in many of the rural communities has also been traced to herdsmen who wield AK-47 in broad daylight in flagrant violation of the laws of the land, which frown at the proliferation of small arms. The authorities look the other way while these atrocities are perpetrated across the country.

The latest bus stop of the audacious bestiality of the herdsmen was Ekiti State, at a community called Oke-Ako in Ikole Local Government. Not less than two residents lost their lives instantly while scores of others suffered varying degrees of injuries and the community as a whole was sacked. Reports said it was a reprisal or vengeance mission by the herdsmen, in that earlier; the community had repelled a similar attack and got some of the assailants arrested by law-enforcement agents; even though they were reportedly left to go scot-free soon after.

As if they expected the community to simply fold its arms and do nothing, the herdsmen returned penultimate week to teach the Oke-Ako people “a lesson”. The community got wind of it and alerted the security agencies but for reasons, which bother on complicity, duplicity, and dereliction of duty, the appropriate authorities failed to act.