Requiem For PDP

 By Dele Sobowale

“All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies” – Dr Arbuthnot, 1667-1735, VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ, p 191. 

Note: This article started on the day of the Ondo State election. The result was not surprising. “You can’t beat something with nothing”. PDP is now nothing. Obong Victor Attah, a former governor of Akwa Ibom State and former Trustee of the PDP, is an internationally-recognised architect. He was the first African to be granted licence to practice as an architect in New York State.

Between Rotimi Amaechi and Godswill Akpabio

By Abraham Ogbodo

My task today is to compare and contrast two illustrious sons of the Niger Delta Region. They are Rotimi Amaechi and Godswill Akpabio. Maybe I shouldn’t have added ‘’illustrious’’ because they have illustrated very little outside self-aggrandizement.

*Amaechi and Akpabio 

Amaechi literally came from nowhere to become so rich and powerful. Before 1999, his entire life and livelihood had been defined by Dr. Peter Odili, who was Rivers State governor between 1999 and 2007 and owns Pamo Hospital where Amaechi had worked as a public relations officer before his astronomic rise to Speakership of the Rivers State House of Assembly.

Akpabio may be a little deeper, but I shall return to him presently.

The Niger Delta Conundrum

By Ray Ekpu

Quite a number of knowledgeable people have commented favourably on the 2018 budget recently presented by President Muhammadu Buhari to the National Assembly. In particular they are enthused by the size of the budget, N8.612 trillion, which is 30% over and above the 2017 budget. But the thrill lies more in the fact that N2.43 trillion will be devoted to capital expenditure. This is about 30.8% of the budget, a strong indication that the government is showing an equally strong commitment to the development of critical infrastructure.

 But this thrill is diminished by two factors (a) all our budgets always have a very low actual implementation regime. They end up as mere paper projects (b) the thrill is also diminished by the threat of the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) to do considerable damage to our oil infrastructure because of the Federal Government’s failure to live up to the promises it made to the Niger Delta people. The Avengers who have the same acronym as the Nigerian Defence Academy, an institution for the training of Nigeria’s armed forces personnel, had observed a ceasefire for the past one year based on the optimism that was fueled by Buhari’s meeting with Niger Delta leaders on November 1 last year. The group called Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) led by such eminent Niger Deltans as Chief Edwin Clark, King Alfred Diete-Spiff and Obong Victor Attah had submitted a 16-point shopping list to Buhari for implementation.