The Islamic rights group, Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), has lauded the Governor of Anambra State, Charles Chukwuma Soludo for vindicating the Armed Fulani Herdsmen and stating that majority of the kidnappings and killings in Anambra and other South-East States are committed by criminals among the Igbo people.

Commending Governor Soludo for being “forthright, MURIC also identified him as “one possessing the right qualities of a future Nigerian President.”

MURIC said in a statement issued by its Executive Director, Professor Ishaq Akintola, on Friday July 11, 2025 that the Anambra State Governor has “proved that he is a Nigerian President-in-the-waiting.”

According to the statement: “The Governor of Anambra State, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, has said majority of the kidnappings and killings in Anambra and other South-East states are not committed by Fulanis as widely believed but by criminals among the Igbo people.

“The Governor stated this during an interactive town hall meeting with Anambra Indigenes in the Diaspora. The programme was held at the Metro Points Hotel in New Carrollton, Maryland, United States of America.

“In his own words, Soludo said, ‘99.99 per cent of kidnappers and other criminals arrested in the state since I assumed office three years ago have been Igbos.’

“This is a landmark declaration. It is indeed an eye-opener for all those who have been following the unfortunate incidents of kidnappings and killings in the South East. We give kudos to Governor Soludo for this honest assertion. It is bold, deep and far-reaching.

“For refusing to dance to the gallery and for hitting the nail on the head without caring whose ox is gored, Soludo has proved that he is a Nigerian-president-in-the-waiting.

This incident has demystified the myth of the Fulani criminal which is more often than not bandied about among gullible Nigerians to stigmatise the Fulani race. On the contrary, we have always maintained that crime has no ethnicity, no religion. Criminals are available everywhere but many Southerners have been misled into believing that every kidnapping or killing committed in the region can only be traced to Fulanis.

“MURIC urges other Governors, traditional rulers and community leaders in the region to follow the good example of Governor Soludo by speaking out on this subject. We must reject stereotypes. We must treat fellow Nigerians only on the basis of what we owe the rest of humanity, namely, openness, love and kindness.

“Soludo comes across as a suitable candidate for Aso Rock in the near future. Genuine national healing can only come under the leadership of a completely detribalized leader like Chukwuma Soludo. He speaks truth to his people and refuses to listen to sycophants.

“Instead of exhibiting disappointment and bitterness towards Governor Soludo for his frankness, we advise the Igbo people to rally round the governor. The South East is in dire need of a leader who is respected nationwide. Soludo has earned that nationwide respect through good governance and also with this Fulani-related incident.

This is an indubitable Presidential material that the Igbos must nurture to maturity. To us, anyone who has the capacity to accommodate all ethnicities and all faiths is a great asset. Soludo is a treasure without measure.

“As we take a break, we charge people of other parts of the country to eschew their anti-Fulani prejudice. Innocent Fulanis have been attacked and killed in some parts of the country. Men of conscience should pause and reflect over the killings and profiling of innocent men and women simply because they belong to a particular race or religion. We must allow good reasoning and objectivity to dictate our actions, not sentiment, not emotion, not perception.”

(Globalupfront)

The hope of the candidate of Labour Party for the 2025 governorship election Chief George Moghalu to win the election heightened just the Presidential candidate of Labour Party in 2023 general elections in Mr Peter Obi along with Senator Victor Umeh, Senator Tony Nwoye and other members of the National Assembly as well as State House of Assembly members kicked off campaign urging the electorate to vote in the Labour Party candidate for the Anambra top.

Obi a former governor of Anambra along with Umeh, Nwoye and others who were present during the ceremony to flag of the campaign for Moghalu’s victory held in Commercial City of Onitsha assured that the Labour Party is ready to rekindle the quality leadership of ex Governor Obi if elected in the November 8 governorship election.

Addressing the audience Obi said that the Labour Party is part of the on going coalition movement for the future of Nigeria adding that his loyalists and followers in the LP and Obedient Movements are currently in African Democratic Congress, ADC for the coalition against 2027 Presidential election but still in LP for Anambra governorship election.

.Obi who spoke on Friday at the All Saints Anglican Church Cathedral, Onitsha, Anambra during the governorship campaign flag off of Dr. George Moghalu, the LP flag bearer and his running mate, Prof. Ifeoma Okaro, maintained that it is high time bad governance is stamped out of Nigeria, starting from Anambra state in 2025 down to Nigeria at large in 2027.

“I am calling on Ndi Anambra to vote for Moghalu as a good man and Labour Party as a vehicle for driving towards our ambition because we are part of the coalition for future and we are in ADC for the coalition for Presidential election but in Labor Party for Anambra governorship election”, Obi further clarified.

In his speech, Senator Victor Umeh representing Anambra Central Constituency described Obi as the sole of progress in Nigeria, while Moghalu who is a man of integrity was carefully chosen by the LP as it’s candidate to replicate Obi’s magic wand in Anambra state.

In his brief remarks, Moghalu promised to work with fear of God and according to the dictates of the party manifestos

According to Moghalu, “We will not use Aka Odo (Pestle) to drive tax. We will not use security operatives to extort or kill opposition. We will not use any crude manner to rule the state and above all, we will institutionalize Agriculture, skill acquisition, manpower development and revolutionize education”.

In an interview with newsmen, Hon. Uchenna Okonkwo representing Idemili North/South constituency in the House of Representatives, appealed to Ndi Anambra to elect Moghalu as the next governor and go to sleep with their two eyes closed.

( Timesreporters)

SCENE TWO: PRESIDENT UNBURDENED HIS HEART TO ME

The venue was the Presidential Villa (Residence and Office) and the subject was to explore options in the face of annulment of the election that was in the offing; the main actors were General Babangida, General Dogonyaro and myself.
This was not the first time General Babangida and I met like this. We met in Minna in early August 1985 to review how he was to proceed with a transition programme should the coup contemplated in August succeed; we met in Lagos in August/September 1985 after he had succeeded and had become the President over the steps he should take to evolve a transition programme; we met in Lagos over the Political Bureau Report and worked out what to do with the Report; we met in Lagos over the steps he should take to get a transition programme put together from the Report of the Political Bureau and the Report from the White Paper Committee.

General Babangida and I met at other times over the following issues: the evolution of the two-party system and the creation of the Centre for Democratic Studies; the setting up of the Constitution Review Committee; the composition of and charge to the Constituent Assembly; the production of the White paper on the Report of the Constituent Assembly; the drafting of the arguments for the Creation of States; the Banning or Disqualification of Persons; the Inauguration of the National Assembly; the Setting up of the National Defense and Security Council and the Transitional Council among other major policy issues in 1993 concerning the Presidential Election. In all these issues, our meetings and the papers produced formed the basis of the policies of his government.

It was not therefore unusual for the President to invite me to think with him in how to get out of the dilemma in which he found himself after the suspension of the election process and the injunctions on the NEC by various courts in the Southwest and Abuja and the decision of NEC to appeal to the Federal Court of Appeal.

I also thought that he wanted to discuss the diplomatic impasse he might have created by not seeing the British High Commissioner to accept the letter from Mr. John Major, the British Prime Minister. I could not think of the US reacting to the impasse because the US seemed to have faded away after the incident of June 11. My mind also went to the possibility nevertheless of a fresh, threatening message from the US. I could not rule out the US.
My mind went to the memorandum of June 20 (See Chapter Four) in which I raised many issues bordering on the President’s inability to assume moral leadership in the face of the apparent derailment of the transition programme and the sliding of the country into chaos. This turned out to be the subject of the meeting.

It was clear when I entered his office that he had lost command/control of the situation. He, in fact, confessed this to me, the first time he was making such a confession since I knew him. He pleaded that he needed help to find a solution to a complex problem which he did not quite understand. It was also clear to me but, unfortunately, not to my fellow Nigerians that the country was without a President that had authority either over the military (nor) over the civilians. One wondered, what would have happened if the political class had been united and pressed for the conclusion of the transition programme. But the political class was part of the problem. It was also not clear to the international community that Nigeria had no effective government at this time.

Why did the international community not issue statements supporting the June 12 elections even though they had the results? General Babangida knew he could purchase the political class, but he knew that the international community was not purchasable.
The President had no moral courage to call his “boys” to order having lied to them about Chief Abiola at the onset. These ‘boys’ had now by-passed him and formally linked up with the anti-democratic elements in the North working in concert with some Igbo leaders who felt that the time had come for them to avenge what they thought the Yoruba had done to them during the civil war. General Babangida was now a victim of this web of intrigue and he thought he needed help to take control of the situation, not to reverse it since he could not.

Once inside his office, he locked the door. He welcomed me with a strong appeal to my loyalty which I assured him was constant. I assured him that my loyalty to him as a friend should never be in a doubt. He looked very worried; he removed his shoes and cap and confessed that his wife did not know where he was at that time and he drove himself from Minna that morning just to talk to me; thus he expected me to be frank with him as I had always been. He went on: I have not seen my wife or briefed her of what I had been going through in the past three days. “I urged him to unburden his heart to me and assured him that I would be as frank as possible but that he would have to be open with me. For a few minutes he remained speechless and looked morose. The situation in which I saw him could only be compared with the situation in which I found him in 1985 when he was agonizing over what to do during the days preceding his decision to overthrow General Muhammadu Buhari’s military regime.

Just as he did on that occasion, he pleaded with me to advise him on how to free himself from the dilemma in which he found himself. On both occasions he used the same choice of words: “I see disaster for myself and my family. Where do I go now? He asked, “Professor, we must find a solution here and now or else I am finished”. He concluded. The operative clause is “we must find a solution’, meaning that he wanted me to work with him or he was relying on me for a solution. I did this with him in the past and he expected me to do it again with him in June 1993.

General Babangida proceeded to recount all that we did together in the past and pleaded that I should see him through this stage. I urged him again to unburden his heart and speak as freely as he always did so that we could discuss the issue. I assured him that there was no political problem that had no solution. He cut in to say that the issue facing him was not political, but had to do with his life, his family’s life, and even the life of his close friends, including me. Still, he was hesitant in addressing the question. Suddenly he got up and reached for the door, making sure that it was well secured; he unhooked his telephones and some security equipment, except the security line which linked him to his Service Chiefs. I was not surprised with this kind of behavior. I had gone through this with him before. It was clear to me that he was in trouble more serious than I had imagined. I was also deeply concerned for my own safety. This was a new angle which he had brought in. I narrowly missed the Orkar coup in 1990. I asked myself “Was a blood thirsty coup maker around”? But the coups that occurred in the past did not happen in broad daylight. He again kept quiet for some time and I pleaded with him the third time to speak his mind to me. He then gave me a pad from his table to take notes. Of course, I thanked him and pointed out that I had a pad and my memory to cope with the issues that would arise from the meeting. General Babangida opened with the following words which I jotted down as closely as possible, word for word.

1. They will kill me, they will kill the President-Elect, Chief MKO Abiola if I went ahead with the election and announced the winner of the elections which we all know to be Bashorun, Chief MKO Abiola. I know so; I am not daft. He won; he tried. I feel bad about the whole matter.
2. Professor, I do not see how they will spare you because they know that you are my principal confidant. You think they do not know you? They know; they know you are with me now. They saw you coming in and they know you are with me now.

He then paused and asked for my views. I started by saying that I sympathized with him. I assured him that I would be the last person to see him or his family dead in the hand of these unknown “they”. I then asked, “Who are these ‘they’ and what are your crimes? Is a coup imminent? Before he could reply I spoke again. “if a coup is imminent and you cannot stop it, then don’t resist, I counselled. “Call them and hand over and spare your life, if that is what they want”! I pleaded. “Is that what they want?” I asked.

It was at this stage that he confessed that he had misled his “boys”. He had assured them that he would be able to stop Chief MKO Abiola before the process reached the stage of election. He had also assured Chief Abiola that the road was clear for him to seek the Presidential election. He was now in severe difficulty as to what to do. He was sitting on the sharp point of a dilemma: it was either his life or his honour as an officer and a gentleman. He was inclined to settle for the former (his life) and to let go of the latter (his honour). I cut in to say that it would involve the whole country and that we might not be that lucky; the same life that we were trying to save could still be threatened and lost. He agreed with me, looking most concerned. Then he said, “This whole problem was caused by my men” and blamed those who pressured him to lift the ban placed on certain persons in December 1991 (see Chapter Three) which opened the way for Chief Abiola and Alhaji Tofa to enter the Presidential race. He also blamed his intelligence officers who told him that Chief Abiola would not get the nomination and that Alhaji Baba Gana Kingibe would defeat him at the Jos Convention. According to him, “They then turned round to tell me the story of how Chief Abiola bought the nomination with millions of Naira”. He thought these were the sources of the problem he faced.
At this stage, I had to cut in to remind the President that the report I brought from that Jos Convention did not say that money was not spent by Chief Abiola. In fact, that report said that money was spent by most of the SDP Governors, as well as Chief Arthur Nzeribe, Dr Olusola Saraki, Chief Emeka Ojukwu and others to promote the candidacy of Alhaji Baba Gana Kingibe and work against Chief Abiola. My report also confirmed that chief Abiola spent money to avoid being humiliated by the combined forces of SDP Governors and the disqualified Presidential aspirants of 1992. In that report, I said that for one man, in the person of Chief MKO Abiola, to withstand these money men and State Governments should be the sufficient reason why I thought the process should be allowed to go forward.
I also reminded the President that that was one of the subjects the Sultan raised with me in Sokoto in May 1993 when he counselled that the process should be abandoned. I asked him to recall that we both agreed on my return from Sokoto that it was too late in the day to do that.
The President then recalled how he blamed his security officers who did not give him both sides of the issue and how he concluded that MKO was his friend and that Tofa was his brother. The president was concerned that the Sultan and the Northern leaders were also opposed to Alhaji Tofa. I reminded him further that we parted that day with the understanding that whoever won the election would be okay by him. I drew his attention to how we came to the “last testament” and wanted to know what happened after May 17, 1993.

But he brought me right back to the immediate problem facing him. He agreed with my account, but said that he did not take his “boys” into confidence and that he had rejected the security briefs in the face of the report which I gave to him. He said that what he told them was that he would be able to stop Chief Abiola at the appropriate time. I then asked: “Do you think you have reached that stage now”?

He said: “Yes and No.

“It cannot be “Yes and “No”, I uttered and continued: “With the greatest respect and with the greatest sense of responsibility and with the greatest sense of loyalty to the President and love for the country, it is late in the day”.
He was shocked by my statement. Without giving a chance for response, I went personal’ and said, “This is not the appropriate time; we have passed that stage, Ibrahim. I can see your problem but the country will not take it”.
While he stared at me I went on: “You cannot tell the country this”. His countenance changed and he said, “The country will just have to take it,” he said “I cannot kill myself for the sake of what the country wants. I am sorry. He lamented. It was astonishing to hear a General State that he could not lay down his life for his country. But I understood what he meant.
It was clear that General Babangida was in a fix as of June 21, 1993 and was in a desperate search of how to escape the wrath of his boys. He had lost the battle over the crucial weekend between June 19th and 21st at Minna

MILITARY FACTOR

I then proceeded to deal with the questions of who were these “they” and for what reasons would they want to kill the President and the President Elect if the June 12 election were allowed to go forward. He named them in military and in ethnic categories:

Sani (meaning General Sani Abacha) is opposed to return to civilian rule. Sani cannot stand the idea of Chief Abiola, a Yonuba becoming his commander in chief at all. Sani seems to have the ears of the Northern leaders that no Southerner especially from the Southwest should become the President of this country. Sani seems to rally the Northern Elders to confront me on the matter. He is winning the Sultan and the Northern leaders are of this frame of mind. Where do I go from here? They do not trust me. Without Sani, I will not be alive today, without the North, I would not have become an officer in the Nigerian Army and now the President of Nigeria.

I then asked what he would want done in the circumstance and he said

I don’t want to appear ungrateful to Sani; he may not be bright upstairs but he knows how to overthrow governments and overpower coup plotters. He saw to my coming to office in 1985 and to my protection in the many coups I faced in the past, especially the Orkar coup of 1990 where he saved me and my family including my infant daughter”.

He went on,

Sani, you know, risked his life to get me into office in 1983 and 1985; if he says that he does not want Chief Abiola, I will not force Chief Abiola on him. I just have to end the whole matter and go back to the place of my birth. That is the way I feel now.

He also named Lt. General Dogonyaro and Brigadier General David Mark who were too close to him and would want the issue resolved within the shortest possible time. In fact, he quoted David Mark as saying:

I’d shoot Chief Abiola the day NEC pronounces him the elected President.

I asked the President what he would want me to do in the face of the threat to his life and the life of the incoming President. He again volunteered another issue from out of the blue which I shall discuss later. The President was in fact at that stage thinking of the military successor when he said:

I wish I can just call the “boys” and hand over to David Mark and pack my luggage and go to Minna.

I thought this was strange; but that was how his mind was working as of that date and time (1:00 pm on June 21, 1993.) He definitely said he would have to retire with the Generals, including Sani Abacha and Joshua Dogonyaro before handing over to David Mark. He was very categorical in this matter. He did not foresee a situation in which Abacha and Dogonyaro could be in one government. These two officers individually saw themselves as the maker of President Babangida and also considered themselves as heir apparent. The order of succession to General Babangida was an issue which would occur later.

I reminded him of one stark fact which he did not quite appreciate. I told him that the report from the Nigerian Election Monitoring Group (NEMG) showed that Chief MKO Abiola secured majority votes in all the polling booths located around the army barracks in the country, which meant that it was only the senior officers who, for their selfish reasons, were opposed to democratic change. He did not respond to this. I also reminded him of the study which the CDS did which demonstrated that the need to intervene was too high among his junior officers, especially those from the North. He also did not respond.

He then volunteered the information that the boys had given him an ultimatum at Minna to chose between vacating office that week on his own or else put a seal of conclusion on the annulment of the whole June 12 election that week. As a matter of fact, he said that they wanted to annul the election themselves over the weekend (on June 12, 1993) with a single announcement while he was with them at Minna but that he pleaded with them to give him a few days to work out the modality for doing it so as to give the impression that he was still in command of the situation.
I thought that he was taking the Nigerian people for a ride. But for how long! I then cut in, “It means you have already made up your mind to abort the democratization project?” He did not respond. This meant that he had already agreed to the annulment with his boys at the Minna meeting. I decided to probe further. I asked: “Is that all the “they? Are there still more? To which he said, “Yes”,

GEO-ETHNIC FACTOR

The next set of people unhappy about June 12 was represented by the Sultan of Sokoto who warned him not to undo the many years of Sardauna’s achievement for the North. The Sultan told him that the election of Chief MKO Abiola, whom he liked as a person and as a fellow Muslim, would enable the Yoruba to reverse the gains which the North had recorded since 1960. He reminded me that the Sultan had sent a message through me to him in May, saying that he should not allow the election to go forward. Suddenly, he exploded: “The Sultan was right after all; I should have stopped it then and the country would have settled down by now”. He told me that the Yoruba in the Presidency were openly parading themselves in the Villa saying that “Rankadede” (ie Northern or Hausa-Fulani hegemony_ would soon give way to “Kabiyesi” (Southern or Yoruba hegemony) and he exploded again, banging the table, “Not here, Professor, not here”. He offered an apology. “I am sorry to speak this way”. Then he continued, “These people just think that without them Nigeria cannot move forward. The Ibos should teach them the lesson of history” said the President, shocking me to the marrow of my bones.
It was clear that the “mistake of 1914” had taken a new turn for General Babangida to speak in that way.

What bothered me was that during the period Yoruba in Abuja had withdrawn to Lagos holding parties, thereby allowing the “annullists” to take over Abuja and consolidate. General Babangida even distanced himself from his Chief Press Secretary, Chief Duro Onabule, who was the former Editor of Chief Abiola’s newspaper, National Concord.
Even the Vice President, Admiral Augustus Aikhomu from Edo State in the South, was also isolated, He did not know what was going on. During this period, he confided in some people that he knew next to nothing about the President’s thinking.
I tried to advise the President not to believe in rumours but he fired back, “Don’t you know that Chief Abiola has already compiled a list of officers he would retire? Don’t you know that he has Yorubas he wants to put in their place? Don’t you know he wants to move Abuja?” The President went on, “Don’t you know all these things about Abiola rice, Abiola milk…

Extract from:The TALE of JUNE 12 – The Betrayal of the Democratic Rights of Nigerians (1993)
Author: Prof. Omo Omoruyi