Buba Galadima, a chieftain of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), and one-time close ally of President Muhammadu Buhari, has decried the President’s performance, as he winds down office, lamenting that Buhari has taken Nigeria 100 years back.
Galadinma while speaking on Arise TV on Wednesday wished that Buhari would have left Nigeria the way he met it on May 29, 2015, stressing that Nigerians would have applauded and escorted him home to Daura on May 29.
Reacting to Femi Adesina, Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the President, who lauded Buhari’s achievements, saying that the President would not be leaving Nigeria the way he met it, Galadima said, “I think he was right when he said that the President wouldn’t be leaving the country the way he met it. I wish that he would have left the country the way he met it on May 29, 2015. We would have clapped for him and even escort him to Daura or wherever he intends to live.
The man set Nigeria 100 years back. He has divided Nigeria along religious and ethnic lines. He has left bad economic policies. When he took over the dollar exchanged for N157 per dollar and he is leaving it at nearly N800 per dollar, that is if you can see the dollar to buy.
He added, “Insecurity was confined to the North-East except in some dark spots that it happened in Abuja, Kano and some few other places. Today, you cannot travel to any part of the country with your eyes closed. You have to spend the night praying that God delivers you. If that is the kind of Nigeria that Femi Adesina will want, then I pray to God to visit him with what the common people suffer daily in Nigeria.
He met the pump price of fuel at a certain figure and we know what it is today. A bag of rice sold at N7,000 but today it is N40,000 or N50,000.
There is nothing so critical to Nigerians more than security, more than food and more than the exchange rate. Once these three are down, what else would Buhari say that he has done? He hasn’t done anything to warrant being applauded,” Galadima said.
The Abuja Division of the Federal High Court has granted the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON) leave to serve a writ of summons on Meta, the owner of Facebook.
The court gave the nod pursuant to an application by ARCON in a pending N30 billion suit against the social media giant for violation of the extant advertising laws of Nigeria.
The writ is to be served at the Meta corporate headquarters of Meta, which also owns Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp social media platforms.
While Meta is the first defendant in the suit, AT3 Resources Limited is the second defendant.
ARCON is seeking a declaration that publishing various advertisements and marketing communications materials targeted at Nigeria through Meta’s platforms without prior vetting and approval by its advertising standards panel is illegal.
The regulatory body also claimed that the act disregarded Nigerian culture, constitutional tenets, moral values and religious sensitivity of citizens.
ARCON is, therefore, seeking an order of perpetual injunction restraining the defendants, their privies, agents, servants and associates from publishing any advertising or marketing communications materials without recourse to ARCON in line with the country’s advertising law.
It is also seeking N30 billion in fines and sanctions for the continued violations and infractions of the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria Act No. 23 of 2022.
A former lawmaker, Shehu Sani, has decried the rate of unemployment in the country.
Sani lamented that many Nigerian youths have resorted to pursuing advanced degrees as a result of unemployment.
The social critic expressed his concern in a post via his verified Twitter handle on Monday.
Recall that a multinational consulting firm, KPMG had stated that the Nigerian unemployment rate had increased to 37.7 per cent in 2022 and will further rise to 40.6 per cent.
KPMG said this was because of the continuing inflow of job seekers into the job market.
While commemorating the “Workers’ Day” celebration, Sani said that unemployment forced many youths to seek for postgraduate studies.
He wrote, “Unemployment has forced so many youths to pursue masters and Doctorate degrees.
Peter Obi, the Presidential candidate for the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 general election, has sent his warmest greetings to Nigerian workers in celebration of the Workers’ Day on May 1st, 2023.
In a statement on Monday, the former Governor of Anambra State urged workers to uphold the values that promote productivity in the country.
He encouraged them to view their jobs as a means of contributing to the nation’s development, emphasizing that if citizens understood the importance of nation-building, Nigeria would experience unprecedented growth and advancement.
Obi praised the Nigerian workforce for their hard work and dedication to the nation’s progress, despite their unfavorable working conditions. He stressed that the nation is blessed with diligent workers who are passionate about the country’s growth and development, and who continue to labor tirelessly for its advancement.
The message reads: “I encouraged the workers not to be disheartened by the many challenges that, today, pervade the economic and political space of the nation.
I also urged everyone to remain focused on building a more productive and prosperous nation, which is part of the offerings of the New Nigeria.
I want to assure you that the forces of darkness that have held this nation bound for long, will not continue to have their way. We are determined to take back our nation for good and we are not giving up.
“I urge you all to remain steadfast. The sun of justice, peace, and development will soon shine on our nation.”
The highest disservice to Nigerian people is the gift of our education system that has continued to produce certificate tigers . An education system that cannot address the challenges of housing , clean environment,food security,public water supply,constant electricity supply,access to cheap funding , access to affordable and quality healthcare ,good road network among many others, do not worth to depend on . Youths at energetic ages are made unproductive and unemployable because of our copy and paste education system. We should train graduates towards addressing our needs and remove emphasis on certificates. NYSC should be removed and be replaced with compulsory military training after secondary education . This should be followed with skill acquisition to address societal gaps with high monetary motivation.
Our education system should not be modeled after western countries which have overcome the problem of production centuries ago. We should resist this consumption modeled education system designed to keep us as consumers of western products and services. We should do everything possible to encourage local ingenuity and creativity.
Ndubuisi Anaenugwu is an Ambassador of Good Governance Ministry
As hearings on the petitions before the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal over the controversial February 25 election get underway, revelations have emerged that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) cannot produce the results of more than 9000 polling units where results were manipulated.
A well-placed source in INEC disclosed that the commission is finding it difficult to reconcile the figures it announced during the presidential election because the original results are no longer available.
The source noted that while INEC is in possession of the altered results, it cannot produce the original ones signed by the presiding officers at the polling units where results were manipulated.
The unfolding crisis, it was learnt, followed the controversial shutdown of the INEC server during the presidential election, which caused difficulty for the commission’s staff to upload results to the BiModal Accreditation Voter System (BVAS) which was subsequently formatted for the governorship election which held three weeks later.
The challenge INEC faces as it heads to Election Petition Tribunal is how to defend the results it announced during the election without showing evidence from the results given to them by the presiding officer, the source added.
During collation of the results, opposition parties, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), rejected the figures announced by INEC, citing among other things, the manipulation of results in several states in favour of the All-Progressives Congress (APC) the presidential candidate Bola Tinubu.
The parties demanded a review of the collation process to address the anomalies, among which was the failure to upload photos of polling station results to a central portal, IReV, created for the purpose.
Results were supposed to be electronically transmitted from each of the more than 176,000 polling stations to the commission’s collation system and also uploaded to its website.
While INEC apologised for the technical glitches” in uploading results on the IREV portal as planned, its chairman Prof Mahmood Yakubu, carried on with the process and declared Tinubu winner.
According to Yakubu, Tinubu scored a total of 8,794,726 votes, while the PDP candidate Atiku Abubakar came second with a total of 6,984,520 votes.
Labour Party candidate Peter Obi came third with a total of 6,101,533 votes while Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) came fourth with 1,496,687 votes.
The opposition parties have since rejected the outcome of the election and filed petitions at the Election Tribunal citing irregularities and INEC’s failure to abide by provisions of the law. The electoral commission and the APC have also filed counterclaims insisting the election was credible.
However, a senior INEC official who craves anonymity has revealed that, “Presidential Election results of more than nine thousand polling units across Nigeria have been missing.
“This is because the original results from the Presiding officer from which the manipulations were done, they do not have it anymore to reconcile how they arrived at the figures that were announced.
“The original results which they collected from the Presiding officer from which they did the manipulation is what they are looking for. They need that to show the results they announced,” the senior INEC source added.
For instance, in the manipulated results sheet where they have 187,000, they need the original to know if the actual votes were 187, 87 or 18. This is the biggest headache now because the numbers are not adding up,” the source said.
The source noted that without the original results, the commission would not be able to figure out how they arrived at the numbers that were declared.
The INEC insider added that the situation is responsible for INEC’s inability to upload 100% of the presidential election results into their system, adding that the last time they uploaded results was March 25.
As of the time of filing this report, INEC had uploaded 94.68 percent of results from the Presidential election on its IREV portal.
The source added, “Problems started after the manipulation of the original results and the shutdown of the INEC server, INEC staffers were said to be using personal phone datas and hotspots to attempt to send the results to the BVAS. The process failed them, and most could not snap or export results before formatting them.
“The results were said to have been snapped from the BVAS machine without exportation to INEC servers after Glo-Nigeria connived with INEC to shut down the server midway into the Presidential elections.
“The challenge INEC is having now is how they intend to go to the tribunal and show how they arrived at the results that were announced without showing evidence from the results given to them by the Presiding officer,” the source noted.
Recall that elections were not held in 240 polling units because there were no registered voters there. As such, the total number of polling units in the country is now 176,606 as against 176,846.
President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the postponement of the 2023 Population and Housing Census, earlier scheduled for May 3-7 to a date to be determined by the incoming administration.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, said in a statement on Saturday that Buhari approved after meeting with some Federal Executive Council members and the National Population Commission Chairman and his team at the Presidential Villa in Abuja on Friday, April 28.
“In arriving at the decision to postpone the Census, the meeting reiterated the critical need for the conduct of a Population and Housing Census, 17 years after the last Census, to collect up-to-date data that will drive the developmental goals of the country and improve the living standard of the Nigerian people,” Mohammed stated.
“The President noted that with the completion of the Enumeration Area Demarcation of the country, the conduct of first and second pretests, the recruitment and training of ad-hoc workers, procurement of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and ICT infrastructures, appreciable progress has been made in the implementation of the 2023 Population and Housing Census.”
Mohammed noted that the president commended the methodology being put in place by the Commission to conduct an accurate and reliable census, especially the massive deployment of technology capable of delivering a world-class census and laying a sustainable basis for future censuses.
The minister added that Buhari has further directed the Commission to continue preparing for the 2023 Population and Housing Census to sustain the gains already recorded and provide the basis for the incoming administration to consolidate these achievements.
The meeting was attended by the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami; the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed; the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed; the Minister of State, Budget and National Planning, Clem Agba and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha.
The Presidential candidate of the Labour party, Peter Gregory Obi whose mandate APC allegedly stole has giving his opinion about the recently recently postponed National Population and Housing Census in Nigeria.
He wrote below :
“FGN’s decision to postpone the 2023 Population and Housing Census, scheduled for 3-7 May 2023, to a date to be determined by the incoming Administration is a propitious and welcome development. National Census is a critical development and nation-building tool.
Meanwhile,Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue has lauded President Muhammadu Buhari for directing that the national population census be postponed.
This is contained in a statement by his media aide, Terver Akase, on Saturday in Makurdi.
He said that with the postponement of the census now approved by Mr Buhari, the federal government should ensure that Nigerians whose communities had been taken over by bandits and armed herders regained their lands and returned home.
He said the lives and well-being of the people must be placed above other factors for the nation to realise its aspiration for greater growth and development.
Mr Ortom had, on April 13, called on the federal government to postpone the planned census until adequate security was guaranteed in the country.
The governor specifically stated that conducting the census will amount to injustice and deprivation of millions of Nigerians who have been displaced from their ancestral homes and are living in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps in the state and other parts of the country.
“I want to say that the FG should suspend the issue of the census because it looks like the proposed census is coming with an agenda.
“So, until they are able to restore security and all our IDPs go back to their ancestral lands to give all of them opportunities to be counted in their homes of birth,” he had said.
On Friday, Mr Buhari announced the postponement at a meeting with some members of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) and the chairman of the National Population Commission with his team at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.
He said the incoming administration would now conduct the exercise even as preparation would still be ongoing to achieve its success.
Nigerians are currently stranded on the journey from Khartoum to Cairo after the drivers of the buses paid to evacuate them complained that their fuel finished and that Federal Government has not remunerated them for the service.
As of the time of filing this report at 2:20 pm, our correspondent gathered that none of the Embassy officials are on the ground to explain to stranded Nigerians, especially the students why the drivers have stopped the buses over their claim.
The PUNCH reports that the evacuation of 2,400 students and other Nigerians trapped by the ongoing conflict in Sudan took off on a slow start on Wednesday as only 15 out of the 40 buses required for the exercise were provided.
Although the Federal Government hired 40 buses for the repatriation of the citizens from Khartoum and other cities to Egypt, only 10 buses were available as of Wednesday morning, while additional five buses were provided later in the day (Wednesday).
Speaking with our correspondent on Thursday, some students fear that the three-day ceasefire declared by the Sudanese armed forces and the Rapid Support Force expires Thursday (today) and they are yet to make buses available.
The Chairman of the Nigerian Community (Elders Forum) in Sudan, Dr Hashim Na’Allah, stated “People are hungry and there is no concrete information from either the Embassy or the Committee in charge of the buses.
People are sitting outside under high temperatures. The temperature is very high that people are thirsty. Nowhere to find water to drink or buy food to eat.
“In the next two to three days, if nothing is done to address this situation, Nigerian students might start dying.”
A female student who spoke on anonymity noted, “We are 150 females mostly from Jigawa and we are stranded. The Embassy said they are not sending buses to us.
“The bus owners have been complaining that they do not have fuel but we are not even seeing the buses. They are not ready to release any of the buses because people are running away from the country.
Today is the last day of the ceasefire. We woke up to gunshots this morning. If we do not leave here today, I do not know what becomes of us.”
In a video sighted by our correspondent, a student was seen crying and saying”Because your family, children, and nephews are on the bus, that is why we are left behind. We are afraid. We do not have water, hunger, and food. These soldiers, their barracks are very close to us here, (International University of Africa). There have been gunshots since last night. No one is here for us.”
The President of the Jigawa State Students Association in Sudan, Umar Abubakar said he has been out since 5 am waiting for a bus to evacuate them.
Abubakar noted, “We are disappointed in everything. We are outside under the sun since 5 am waiting for the buses, not even one official from the embassy is around. Those people are just playing us along.”
He added that those who were evacuated from Khartoum to Egypt have been stranded since yesterday (Wednesday) at a border between Sudan and Egypt.
Abubakar said, “Even those that left for Egypt yesterday are now stranded on their way because the drivers said they have not been paid and that they are not moving an inch until they are paid, or else they will drop the students there and return.”
Confirming this, a student of Noble College in Sudan, Idris Wakama, said “The drivers dropped our students in the middle of the desert. We do not know what is happening. They collected $100 from some of our students on the buses. The Federal Government needs to address the situation quickly.”
In a video obtained by our correspondent, students were stranded long frustrated in a quiet and desert environment.
A female was seen yelling, “Before we started this journey, we fought and now that we have the privilege of moving, the drivers dropped us in the middle of this desert. We have been stuck here for five hours.
“We do not have money nor water. We are in an unknown environment and it is very dangerous.”
The National Economic Council, on Thursday, in Abuja, said it has agreed that petrol subsidy should “not be removed” as earlier planned for June 2023.
The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, disclosed this to State House correspondents shortly after the valedictory Council meeting presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the Council Chambers of the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Ahmed said the Council agreed on the need for continued discussions on the issue adding that the FG, together with states and representatives of the incoming administration, require more preparatory work.
She said, “Council agreed that the timing of the removal of fuel subsidy should not be now. But that we should continue with all of the preparatory works that need to be done and that this preparatory has to be done in consultation with the states and other key stakeholders including representatives of the incoming administration.
“Council agreed that the fuel subsidy must be removed earlier rather than later because it is not sustainable. We cannot afford it anymore. But we have to do it in such a way that the impact of the subsidy is as much as possible, mitigated on the lives of ordinary Nigerians.
So, this will require looking at alternatives to the fuel subsidy that needs to be planned for and subsequently put in place. But also what needs to be done to support the people that will be most affected as a result of the removal.”
Ahmed added that the FG will be working together with representatives of the states between now and June 2023.
We have a plan that we will start working on, putting the building blocks towards the eventual removal of the first subsidy.
“And if I may remind this forum that the budget for 2023 has a provision for fuel subsidy only up to June 2023 and also the Petroleum Industry Act has a provision that requires that all petroleum products must be deregulated 18 months after the effective date of the PMS removal and that that period is also up to June 2020,” the minister explained.
