Buhari’s Search For Jackals And Hyenas

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It is a Monday morning. President Muhammadu Buhari has just resumed in his office after his over two months’ medical vacation. He would have loved to have more rest. But he has been inundated with tales of the intrigues to take over his job. He just has to muster every ounce of energy to take back his office. A file is presented to the president. In it is a list that contains the names of those who were hell-bent on scuttling his presidency while he was away. On the list are ministers. There are also special aides and other officials in the presidency. All these are to be sacked. Welcome to the post-London Buhari era in Aso Rock.

*Buhari 

The criteria for the mass cleansing are only clearly known to the helmsman of Aso Rock. However, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo who was the Acting President while Buhari was away is not on the list. He has been found extraordinarily loyal despite all the machinations and intrigues of some people to intimidate and blackmail him into resigning, Buhari considers him as having judiciously represented his interest while he was away. What exemplifies Osinbajo’s fidelity to Buhari’s vision is his maintaining the position of the president that the acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) could remain in office till 2019 despite his not being confirmed by the Senate. Again, Osinbajo refused to succumb to the clamour for restructuring that ruled the polity.

Buhari has always believed that nobody should tweak the structure of the country as it is. He is on the same page with former President Olusegun Obasanjo who also fought the civil war to keep the country together. But as for former Military President Ibrahim Babangida, Buhari would respond to him appropriately at the right time for taking a position on restructuring that is different from that of the president. Of course, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has always been coveting the president’s job. But there is a way to also pay him for turning himself into a jackal.

President Buhari On Life-Support Since June 6 – Gov Fayose

*Gov Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State  

Full Text Of Governor Ayodele Fayose's Address At A Press Conference in Ado-Ekiti On Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Today, it makes 53 days since our President; Muhammadu Buhari left Nigeria to attend to his health challenges abroad. No official information as to his whereabouts and his state of health.

Like every other Nigerians, I do not wish the president dead, I have therefore maintained dignified silence since we were told that the President embarked on his second medical trip abroad this year.

However, the recorded audio message which was released by the Presidency as the President’s Ramadan message to Nigerians necessitated my setting the records straight today.

No doubt, the audio message was only a damage-control strategy aimed at further deceiving Nigerians.

I have therefore elected in good conscience to state as follows:

Killer-Herdsmen, Igbo Timid Govs And The Fayose Solution

By Tony Nwankwo
Not long ago, the peaceful, self-subsistence farming community of Ndi Okereke Abam, Arochukwu LGA, Abia State, was attacked by the now notorious, AK-47 rifle wielding, bow and arrow bearing marauders masquerading as Hausa/Fulani herdsmen.  By the time they were through with the unarmed, government abandoned community, seven persons, all from Ndi Okereke Abam, were down, fatally injured. 

They are still recuperating in hospitals in the area. According to a report, the affected community and other Ovukwu people plan to protest the invasion and wanton destruction of their farmlands by these herdsmen.  The herdsmen come into the heartland of the Igbo, they lead their cattle into farmlands, here it was the rice farm, they stand akimbo and watch their cattle feast on harvested rice seeds arranged for evacuation.  In some instances, they feed off the rice farm and other farmlands, wasting the crops, the only means of livelihood of the people. In some others, they attack, maim and kill people, rape the women. 

When they are done, they sing their song of triumph and celebrate their victory over their victims as they lead their cattle to yet another community for the same purpose. This is the practice of the Hausa/Fulani herdsmen since they started bearing arms and terrorising local communities. According to the report, the member representing Arochukwu/Ohafia Federal Constituency in the National Assembly, Mr. Uko Nkole, visited the community, paid the medical bills of the injured and appealed for peaceful co-existence.  From the state capital, Umuahia, Governor Okezie Ikpeazu said government has land for grazing for cattle, “but because we are Nigerians, the government would allow some level of understanding to prevail”. 

And the leader of this invading army, masquerading as herdsmen, Chairman, Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders, Hassan Buba, is sad about the incident and promised it will not happen again. So, the herdsmen should go home and sin no more. Meanwhile, Governor Ikpeazu, cannot point anywhere in Nigeria, where peace has prevailed between people and Hausa/Fulani herdsmen because an agreement was reached. You cannot get a binding agreement when  one party is politically authorised to carry automatic weapons and ready to use them, while the other can’t.  It is the same stand that Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State, adopted when herdsmen invaded a community in his State and massacred  the people. 

Buhari: Worst President Nigeria Ever Had?

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

I have two confessions to make from the outset.

I am an incurable optimist. I am a firm believer in the maxim that no matter how dark a tunnel may appear to be, there will always be some ray of light at the end.

Of course, this presupposes that for you to encounter this light, you must not stand still at the darkest end of the tunnel. Therefore, the philosophy underpinning this belief is that for you to get to the bright end, you must keep moving away from the darkest end.

*Buhari 

You must stay the course; perseverance is the watchword. Don’t quit because quitters never win. Here, pragmatism is an inevitable companion.

This conviction also informed my reaction to the socio-political and economic developments in our country in recent times.
I strongly believed that no matter how starkly the national augury may seem to tilt south, we shall overcome as long as we have a leadership that is prepared to put on its thinking cap, prepared to listen, be pragmatic and innovative in handling the myriad of problems confronting the nation.

The last thing we need right now is a leadership that is in denial, a leadership that revels, like the ostrich, in burying its head in the sand, thinking that nobody is seeing it. The last thing we need in this country is a leadership whose only solution to the problems is to point fingers of blame at others. Unfortunately, this is the leadership we have right now.

My second confession is that I am really afraid for this country’s fate under President Muhammadu Buhari’s watch.

My worry was not informed by the frightening numbers released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Wednesday, August 31, which finally confirmed what many already knew – that the economy had slid into recession or that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth at a woeful –2.06% performance did worse than expected. It was –0.36% in the first quarter.
The fact that $1 exchanged for N425 last week with a potential of going beyond N500 before the end of the year, while inflation rose to 17.1 per cent in July from 16.5 in June is scary, but didn't worry me much.
Ditto the unemployment figure which increased to 13.3 per cent from 12.1 per cent and investment inflows which dropped to the lowest levels at $647.1 million from $710 million.

These figures are the natural consequences of the otiose and impractical monetary and fiscal policies of the Buhari administration. Discerning Nigerians and members of the international community didn’t expect anything different.

But as grim as they are, what worries me most is the puerile antics of some chieftains of the All Progressives Congress (APC), including Buhari, and APC National Chairman, John Oyegun.

It baffles me that those who claim to be our leaders can actually indulge in such laughable political shenanigans.

Halliburton Scandal: Between Governor Fayose and Aisha Buhari

By Jude Ndukwe
This week has been mired in official scandals. From the purported secret employment by the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) involving some high-ranking government officials, to the president’s academic certificate saga, the alarming freezing of a sitting governor’s account without a court order as required by law, the complete northernisation of Nigeria’s security agencies as follows: Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, North; Minister of Defence, North; National Security Adviser, North; Chief of Army Staff, North; Director-General of Department of State Services (DSS), North; Comptroller-General of Customs, North; Comptroller-General of Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), North; Comptroller-General of Nigerian Prisons Service (NPS), North; Commandant General of Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), North, and finally crowned it with the appointment of another northerner, Ibrahim Kpotum Idris as the Inspector-General of Police; to the accusation and counter-accusation between Governor Peter Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State and the presidency over the involvement of a certain Aisha Mohammadu Buhari in the Halliburton scandal that led to the conviction of a US Congressman, Williams Jefferson in 2009.

*Fayose 

While Fayose had called the attention of the world to the involvement of the said Aisha M. Buhari in the Halliburton scandal as contained in a Government Sentencing Memorandum from the US, the presidency has shown desperation in denying the issue by claiming, amidst very uncomplimentary language, that the Aisha referred to in the US document is not the president’s wife.

To further convince Nigerians about the true identity of the Aisha Buhari in question, a Nigerian international passport bearing the name Buhari, Aisha Mohammadu was hurriedly “packaged” and released to the public. However, on a closer look, it appears the said passport has only done more harm than good to the case of the presidency as it is replete with errors, too many coincindences and inconsistencies.

For example, it is too much a coincidence for the three names of two individuals to be the same as in this case even though the “Muhammadu” on the passport was spelt to read “Mohammadu” while the same individuals seem to hail from the same town of Daura as the president.

Also, it is absolutely impossible in our culture and Islamic religion for a woman’s given name to be “Mohammadu” as indicated in the passport making the rounds. The name “Mohammadu” or “Muhammadu” is usually associated with males and cannot be a name given to any female by anyone.

Furthermore, while the Halliburton scandal took place between 2000 and 2005, with Jefferson getting convicted in 2009, those who quickly made the passport did not put that into consideration as the passport’s date of issue reads January 2012, confirming fears in some quarters that the whole passport saga is an after-thought.

What this strange scenario has created is a lacuna that leaves Aisha Buhari, wife of the president, open and vulnerable to all manner of official ridicule and caricature as architects of such ridicule can always claim that they are referring to the other “Aisha Buhari” even when it is obvious that the person being referred to is actually the president’s wife. Suing for libel, slander and such other actions to claim redress of any kind becomes an exercise in futility as we now have two Aisha Buhari hailing from the same town in Nigeria.

This then leads us to the certificate saga of Mr President himself.

Herdsmen Menace: Gov Fayose Confronts The Monster

By Amanze Obi

It is hardly surprising that the rampage of Fulani herdsmen has continued unabated. This is in spite of the outrage that trailed the organised massacre that they unleashed on Enugu State. The itinerant killers are not yet deterred by anything. When they soaked Enu­gu State with blood, what they got was mere condemnation. No deterrence was placed on their way. That is why the story of their kill­ings has remained unending. They have con­tinued to strike elsewhere in the south and the Middle Belt. So far, Nimbo and Agatu communities in Enugu and Benue states re­spectively have borne the worst brunt of their attacks.

Regardless of the wanton destruction of life and property in Agatu and Nimbo, the Federal Government has not acted in a way that suggests that we have a monster in our hands. The governments of the affected states did not also respond as stridently as ex­pected to the emergencies.

But it is gratifying to note that Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State has departed radi­cally from the complacency that we saw in Enugu State. Just a few days ago, we were told told that the herdsmen struck in Ekiti State, leaving two people dead. Fayose could not accept this. He was appalled by it. He did not just condemn the murder in Ekiti, he also talked tough. Then he followed up the tough talk with concrete action. He has banned cattle grazing on Ekiti soil. He has told the herdsmen to take their cattle elsewhere. They are no longer wanted in Ekiti State. That is the order. That is the situation in Ekiti at moment.

In taking that decision, Fayose was only doing his job. As the chief security officer of his state, the governor has a responsibility to take necessary steps to protect life and prop­erty in his domain. He did not have to wait for the authorities in Abuja who, obviously, are not interested in the murderous activities of the herdsmen.

I consider Fayose’s action very appropri­ate. It is the answer to the impunity and impudence that surround the activities of the herdsmen. It is also gratifying that the governor’s action is enjoying the blessing of Afenifere. By so doing, the region, which has come under attack, has stood up to be count­ed. This is unlike what obtained in Enugu State where neither the state government nor any Igbo group responded stridently or appropriately to the ugly development.

In a harassed and cowed region, such as the south of Nigeria, it can only take a man of un­common courage, such as Fayose to confront this monster of oppression and suppression. To demonstrate that somebody somewhere is enjoying the bad situation, Northern states Governors Forum shocked decent minds with their response to the Enugu killings. While blood was still flowing in Nimbo, the governors had the audacity and temerity to defend the Fulani killers. They berated those, who condemned the action of the Fulani herdsmen. The governors said they were unhappy that the Fulani were being vilified. They warned against further demonisation of the Fulani race. That was impudence walking with a swagger.

Nigeria: Sixteen Minus One

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It is not unusual for the fierceness of the support for the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari and his All Progressives Party (APC) to find expression in the riposte that the citizens must not expect an automatic realisation of the change the party and its helmsman promised. Their expectations have often been scaled down with the reprimand that if it took the last administration 16 years to liquidate all props for corporate probity and sanity, it smacks of sheer perfidy on the part of the citizens to ask the president and his party to rebuild the nation in just one year.

But this position has turned out as a self-fulfilling prophecy since the Buhari administration is pathetically denuded of the hallmarks of stellar performance as it marks one year on Sunday. No doubt, the promise to fight corruption was irresistible. Let’s get all the money stolen from the national treasury and deploy it in the development of electricity, roads and other infrastructure.  No one really opposed fighting corruption.  Indeed, the citizens thought that fighting corruption was a grand idea and that once this was resolved, the nation would sally forth towards its destined path of greatness.

But a year after, the fight against corruption has been reduced to a part of the nation’s cocktail of chimeras. Forget about the arrests and their razzmatazz  of  media trials. The question the citizens are asking now is, how effective has the anti-corruption campaign been in the past one year? This is simply because the Buhari administration’s  prosecution of  the anti-corruption campaign  has been divorced from  the  rigorous  imagination  that would have earned it more credibility. It is convenient for the Buhari administration to engender an environment in which the focus is only on the members of the opposition whom the anti-graft agencies arrest and ask to refund the money they have stolen. But the inconvenient and a much more credible way to prosecute the anti-corruption campaign on the back of audacious imagination would have been to extend it to both foes and friends. Now, it is the people who ought to be among those being tried who are dictating the terms of the anti-corruption regime.  Let’s strip the argument that we should start from somewhere and use some people as scapegoats of all its sophistry. As long as the anti-corruption campaign has not caught up with all former leaders who made their billions simply on account of occupying public offices, and as long as it is only targeted at the members of the opposition and critics of the policies of the Buhari administration, we cannot regard it as one of the achievements of the past year.

Buhari, Fayose, Ugwuanyi, And This Bitch Of A Life

By Chuks Iloegbunam  

“If you are neutral in situations of in­justice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” – Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

“The ultimate tragedy is not the op­pression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Vexed voices have, in exasperation, been asking where Reverend Father Ejike Camillus Mbaka is. They are absolutely right who expect the priest to speak up. People should ask where Bola Tinubu is, the one who covets the feat of unknotting Pandora’s Box. People should be asking where many other previously vocal Nigerians are. People should conduct an investigation on the seemingly abrupt dryness of Niyi Osundare’s inkpot, for he has put an incongruous halt to his fondness for poetizing on national ques­tions. All those experts on radio and television, all those incisive analysts on cyberspace and concourses – know you one thing! People have a right to ask what sneaked in and stole your voices. What crept in and rendered you incapable of standing up? What stealthily stymied your very humanity?

People also have another re­sponsibility, which in fact is more fundamental than pointing accus­ingly at the supposed guilty. People should be asking themselves where they stand.

People will, perhaps, temporar­ily desist from wondering whether Wole Soyinka had embarked on a journey out of the planet Earth. The Nobelist’s voice finally crashed against the wall of eviscerating in­justice: 

“Impunity evolves and be­comes integrated in conduct when crime occurs and no legal, logical and moral response is offered. I have yet to hear this government articulate a firm policy of non-tol­erance for the serial massacres have become the nation’s identification stamp.

“I have not heard an order given that any cattle herders caught with sophisticated firearms be instantly disarmed, arrested, placed on trial, and his cattle confiscated. The na­tion is treated to an eighteen-month optimistic plan which, to make matters worse, smacks of abject ap­peasement and encouragement of violence on innocents.

“Let me repeat, and of course I only ask to be corrected if wrong: I have yet to encounter a terse, rigor­ous, soldierly and uncompromising language from this leadership, one that threatens a response to this unconscionable blood-letting that would make even Boko Haram re­pudiate its founding clerics.”

Reject Buhari's Loan Application - Gov Fayose Tells Chinese Govt

Ekiti State Governor, Mr, Ayodele Fayose, has written to the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, to turn down President Muhammadu Buhari's request for a $2 billion loan from China. The letter (Ref. EK/GOV/28/10) which was  delivered to the Chinese Embassy in Abuja by top officials of the Ekiti State Government will also be given directly to the Chinese leader by Gov Fayose has already left the country to China. Incidentally, President Buhari is still in China on a state visit. Below is the letter:  

*Gov Fayose 

“I write as one of the major stakeholders in the project Nigeria, and a governor of one of the federating units making up Nigeria, to draw your attention to report that the Federal Government of Nigeria is on the verge of obtaining a $2 billion loan from the Export-Import Bank of China.

“This $2 billion loan is part of the N1.84 trillion the Federal Government of Nigeria has proposed to borrow to finance the 2016 budget, which is yet to be signed by the President, Muhammadu Buhari owing to unending controversies between the Executive and Legislative arms of government.

“According to reports, Nigeria desires to raise about $5 billion abroad to cover part of its 2016 budget deficit. This is projected to hit N3 trillion ($15 billion) due to heavy infrastructure spending at a time when the slump in global oil prices has slashed the country’s export revenues.

“While conceding that all nations, especially developing ones need support to be able to grow because no nation is an island, I am constrained to inform you that if the future of Nigeria must be protected, the country does not need any loan at this time.

“The government of China should be mindful of the fact that Nigerians, irrespective of their political and religious affiliations are totally opposed to increment of the country’s debt burden, which is already being serviced with 25 per cent of the Federal Government annual budget.

“It will interest the government of China to know that some of the projects for which the loan is being sought are not captured in the controversial 2016 budget, which has been sent to the President by the National Assembly for his assent. For instance, the Lagos – Calabar Rail project was not included in the budget proposal the President presented to the National Assembly and it was not included in the Appropriation Bill passed by the National Assembly.

Buhari, Nigerians Are Suffering, Stop Needless Foreign Trips - Fayose

...US Trip “Joke Of The Year”

Ekiti State Governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose has called on well-meaning Nigerians to prevail on President Mohammadu Buhari to stop his needless foreign trips, describing the president’s trip to the United States of America on Wednesday for the 4th Nuclear Security Summit while Nigerians are suffering at home as “joke of the year.”

*Gov Fayose 

The governor said “it remains a mystery what President Buhari that met power generation at 6,000MW and could not manage it such that power generation crumbled to 0MW yesterday, will contribute to the Nuclear Energy Summit in America.”

Speaking through his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, Governor Fayose said “it is shameful that while President Buhari was far away in the United States of America, attending a summit that does not have any bearing on Nigeria and its people, an unprecedented happened - power generation stopped completely for over three hours!”

He said the sufferings of Nigerians deserved the attention of the president instead of junketing around the world, wasting the country’s scarce foreign exchange.

The governor alleged that over $50 million must have been spent on the president’s frequent foreign trips, adding that Nigerians should ask President Buhari whether his trip to the United States of America to attend Nuclear Energy Summit will bring the lingering fuel scarcity being experienced in the country to an end.

Buhari Has No Answers To Nigeria's Problems – Gov Fayose

Ekiti State governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose has called on Nigerians to pray specially for President Mohammadu Buhari; saying; “The President needs God to give him the necessary wisdom to be able to find solution to the country’s economic and security problems.”

*Buhari 

The governor also challenged the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, to relocate to Sambisa in Borno State or Yobe and move around there without heavy military security if indeed he was sure that Boko Haram had been defeated.

Speaking through his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, Governor Fayose said; “only God’s intervention can save Nigeria from the present economic and security problems as it is glaring that the man running the affairs of the country at the federal level does not have any answer to the problems.”

He said; “Even the Holy Bible said in James 1:5 that if anyone lacks wisdom, he should ask God and as it is, Nigerians must assist the President in asking for wisdom and understanding to tackle the country’s economic and security problems before Nigeria is further plunged into more woes with the federal government’s decision to borrow N2.2 Trillion, which translates to N6.066 billion per day to finance the 2016 Budget.” He described the Federal Government’s announced reduction of petrol pump price from N87 to N85 per litre as a continuation of the All Progressives Congress (APC) government’s governance by deceit, saying; “Even secondary school students of economics know that you cannot deregulate and regulate at the same time.”

President Buhari’s Six Months Of Deceitful “Change” – Gov Fayose

Press Release 

Ekiti State Governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose has described the last six months of President Mohammadu Buhari’s administration as that of “deceitful change,” lamenting that the President was destroying the image of Nigeria and its people for cheap international recognition.

*Gov shopping for foodstuff at a local

 market 

The governor, who also described the claim by the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, that the ministry do not have details of any fund recovered from officials of the immediate past government of Dr Goodluck Jonathan as a vindication of his position that the President was not saying the truth, said Nigerians must ask the President where the so-called looted fund was paid and who made the payments.

He said: “If the Ministry of Finance is not aware of any recovered fund, it is either those who purportedly made the refund did so by loading cash into Ghana-Must-Go bags and dropping the bags in the President’s bedroom or the fund was lodged into the Central Bank without records.

Speaking through his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, Governor Fayose said “the only areas President Buhari has recorded tremendous achievements are areas of political persecution, disobedience of court order and desperate bid to turn the country to a one-party state as evident in the Kogi State election, which the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), headed by Buhari's kinsman staged managed and muddled up.”