Gov Ambode: There Shall Be Secondary After The Primary!

By Abraham Ogbodo

And so, Ambode could not be forgiven his ‘sins’ by the godfather. He has been smashed like a gadfly and when the polls open sometime in February next year to pick a governor for Lagos State after the 2015/2019 electoral cycle, his name shall be missing from the ballot paper. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who is part of the Akinwunmi Ambode administration in Lagos as managing director of Lagos Property Development Corporation (LSDPC) has been chosen by the oracle to replace him. 

*Bola Tinubu and Gov Akinwunmi Ambode

It wasn’t as if a proper trial was conducted and Akinwunmi Ambode found guilty of serious and unpardonable sins. He was just unfortunate to be on the scene at this time. The charge, specifically, was that he had forgotten, since he became governor about three and half years ago, to invite the real owners of Lagos State to the dining table. It was not also said that he was eating alone while others were kept at bay salivating. 

Why President Buhari And June 12 Can Never Meet

By Jesutega Onokpasa

Apart from his recent June 12 gimmick, President Muhammadu Buhari had hitherto never mentioned MKO Abiola or even June 12 in any positive light. In any case, since Gen Sanni Abacha who stole Abiola’s mandate and whom Buhari happily, thankfully and gratefully worked for remains Buhari’s hero, then that same Buhari cannot deserve any moral credit on account of anything he does about June 12, however laudable.

*President  Buhari 

The bitter truth is that the only viable explanation for his sudden volte face is that Buhari, seeing his Northern hegemony in tatters in the Middle Belt thanks to his rampaging cattle herding kinsmen and clearly perceiving himself to be a drowning man, now finds himself clutching to Abiola (whom he hitherto never showed any regard for) and to June 12 (which he hitherto never expressed any fidelity to) for sheer survival.

APC’s Recent Congresses: Omen Of Impending Calamity

By Godwin Etakibuebu

At the last count, eight states of the federation have drawn up parallel Executives to counter what some people called “authentic Executives” of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, during the recently concluded congresses. One of the most unbelievable states where this happened is Lagos. That some people, albeit members of the APC in Lagos State, could challenge the supremacy of the de-facto Jagaban of the South-West politics would remain one of the wonders of modern Nigerian political history.

 

Emergence of the parallel Executives in the eight states came with re-introduction of politics of blood-spilling into the Nigerian polity and this is the most unfortunate dimension of the APC debacle. These eight  states of Lagos, Oyo, Ondo, Zamfara, Enugu, Ebonyi, Kwara and Delta, where parallel Executives emerged saw violence. A few people died in some of these states while in others, it was a day of bloodbath; like the case in Ondo State, where notable citizens were grossly humiliated as most of them were stripped naked. This is without mentioning Imo State where Rochas Okorocha, the APC governor, was completely demystified and dethroned by the  machinery of the APC itself.

Nigeria: A Hard Lesson For Gov Rochas Okorocha

By Olusegun Adeniyi

On 24th March 2012, Chief Rochas Okorocha, then less than a year in office as Imo State Governor, was in Kosovo where he signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for an independent power plant, an agro processing plant and several other industries that he promised would be established in his state. There were neither feasibility studies nor any clear ideas as to where the money to finance these projects would come from but those sorts of things never really worry the ebullient governor. 

*Gov Rochas Okorocha 

A few weeks before the trip to the Balkan Peninsular, Okorocha had declared a four-day holiday for workers in Imo State so they could partake in the take-off of the Community Council Government (CCG) he instituted. And for this extra-constitutional fourth-tier of government, the governor approved the disbursement of N5 million to each of the communities in the 27 local councils from a subvention of N3 billion that was not captured in the 2012 Imo State Appropriation Bill.. He also declared free education at all levels in the state after announcing that he would be paying salaries to all the primary school pupils (yes, pupils, not teachers alone). And to be sure, Okorocha actually went to some primary schools where the pupils were lined up for him to hand them N100 each!