Labour Party gubernatorial aspirant for Imo state, Sam Amadi has kicked against the state of affairs in the party ahead of the Imo state primary election saying delegates are selling votes for dollars.
Amadi, in a signed statement, made public terms and conditions for his continued participation in the Imo state Labour Party governorship primary elections.
He stated his resolve not to partake in the “ Open Bazaar for delegates “ or be a part of buying and selling of delegates which appears to be the norm ahead of the Imo state Labour party gubernatorial primaries.
Speaking on his decision to join the Imo gubernatorial race under the banner of the Labour Party, Amadi believes the party, under the leadership of Peter Obi, stands a chance to wrestle power from Hope Uzodinma’s stranglehold in the state.
According to his statement, his hopes have been dashed by the events leading up to the gubernatorial primary election.
“Today, as the delegates decide on the candidate for the party. I wish them the wisdom and the courage to vote right. I must note that the events of the last few days are dashing my hope that the party is ready to be a vanguard of change that will mobilise Imo people against the Hope Uzodinma administration.
“ I must state clearly that I will not participate in the buying and selling of delegates in any form. I have offered myself, my integrity, my competencies, and my courage to dislodge Hope Uzodmobilise to mobilise the people to build a new Imo that is secured, prosperous, and accountable.
“ I will not give anyone one kobo. I have given everything. I have dedicated myself entirely to being an exemplary Chief executive of the state. I am coming to serve the people and to sacrifice everything to make Imo the most successful black state in the world.”
The supplementary election for the Ogbaru Federal Constituency in Anambra State is a kind of drama, featuring vote buying, manifest official lateness by electoral officials and other theaterics.
Visits to the various polling units across the Ogbaru area revealed that some of the registered voters who had exhausted their patience had gone home, while some who went home earlier had returned the second time, before the arrival of the electoral officials, who just drove into the venues just few minutes ago, including the Iyiowa Odekpe ward, where the officials arrived at about 10:27am, against the 8.am scheduled time for commencement of the exercise.
A concerned citizen in the Kala area of the Constituency, Paschal Candle, also told this reporter that the area had been taken over by the officials of the Department of State Service (DSS), who are on ground to ensure smooth conduct of the exercise.
He further hinted that some political thugs had been arrested in the area, following their threats and gallivanting to disrupt the election.
Aside these, further updates revealed that massive vote buying is currently ongoing at many polling units in the area, most especially at Okpoko community, where the moneybags currently buy one at the tune of ₦10,000 (ten thousand).
It was gathered that some voters have smartly collected up to ₦50,000 (fifty thousand naira) each on a rotational basis for their individual votes.
Some of the residents of the community who spoke to 247ureports under the condition of anonymity decried the act as illegal deal, while also calling for more security presence in the area to end the surreptitious fraudulent act.
Omasi and Umueje communities in Ayamelum Local Government Area are to benefit from the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts of the cotton wooden gas plant and first Modular Systems Gas Ltd, partners to Orient Petroleum Plc.
Beloveth John Funakpo of the cottonwooden and Theophilus Elobebam of First Modular Systems Gas Ltd (FMSGL), partners to Orient Petroleum Plc highlighted some of the objectives of the company to include establishing a dependable supply of gas across the region by processing, compressing and transporting to industry locations in the areas.
It was also made known that the feed gas was 11 bars (1100kpa) from the ORR delivery line which enters a slug catcher (a.k.a separator) where natural gas liquids water and other impurities are removed.
Their presentations showed that the feed gas enters a feed gas compressor and undergoes a two stage compression process to a pressure of 22.8 bars (2280kpa).
It further explained that the pressurized and dehydrated feed gas flows into a light hydro-carbon recovery system during which process the enthanise which removes the butaniser components are separated.
The Managing Director of Orient Petroleum Plc, Engr. Sunny Okoye, on his part noted that the 10 hectare gas project would encourage domestic utilization of natural gas in the South East region of the country.
More details have emerged as to why Egyptian and PSG international, Hakimi Achraf decided to make his mother the sole manager of his wealth despite being married to a Spanish Super model and actress.
Our check reveals that the football who came from a humble background explained that his mother toiled all day to make us the family succeeded while his father was a street vendor.
According to him, he said: “My mother cleaned the houses and my father was a street vendor. We come from a modest family that struggled to earn a living.”
“I fight everyday for them. They sacrificed themselves for me.
Hakimi, who super model wife, had filed for a divorce following allegation of rape with another woman, sought for more than half of the footballer’s wealth. Unfortunately, court found out that the footballer was worthless as most of his wealth had been willed in his mother’s name.
Our check also found out that the football star bought all his basic and luxurious needs using his mother’s name and account.
The British Government has reportedly apologized to Labour Party Presidential Candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, over his illegal detention and harassment at Heathrow Airport, London.
The apology came following the admittance of an immigration official to have wrongly handed Obi a detention note in a search of a man who impersonated him to commit forgery and identify theft, reports The Nigerian Voice news portal.
British authorities said the uncomplimentary treatment he received was “completely unacceptable” and thence issued a personal apology, the report says.
“Frankly, the Immigration Official’s action has been appalling – and we are sorry,” a report by The Nigerian Voice quotes British immigration authorities as saying in a personal apology to Obi.
It would be recalled that Obi, a former governor of Anambra State, was stopped and questioned at the airport by the United Kingdom immigration office last Friday, April 7. He was however allowed to go following protests by Nigerians at the airport.
It would be recalled that Obi, a former governor of Anambra State, was stopped and questioned at the airport by the United Kingdom immigration office last Friday, April 7. He was however allowed to go following protests by Nigerians at the airport.
A Grade ‘A’ Customary Court in Ibadan has dissolved the 13-year-old marriage between Susan Udeze and her estranged husband, Frank, after he called her a witch.
Delivering judgment, the court’s president, Mrs S. M. Akintayo, held that she dissolved the marriage in the interest of peace and order.
Akintayo awarded custody of the two children to Udeze and ordered Frank to pay N15,000 monthly as feeding allowance.
She ordered Udeze and Frank to be jointly responsible for the education, medical and other welfare of the children.
The president of the court also granted the order restraining Frank from harassing, threatening and interfering with the private life of Udeze.
She ordered Udeze not to deny Frank access to the children.
Udeze, while testifying in January 2022, told the court that her husband might “sniff life out of her if she continued to live under the same roof with him.”
“Frank labelled me a witch and sends me out of the house at night after beating the hell out of me.
“He showed no form of consolation when my mother died. He does not provide for our three children.
“I became more scared of Frank when he threatened to pour acid on me. I reported the incident at the police station and ran away from his house,” she said.
However, the defendant was not in court when he was called to start his defence.
Recent research has revealed that the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Gregory Obi, won the presidential election held on February 25, 2023, at all military installations and environs where thugs and hooligans do not have access or free reign.
This was disclosed in an in-depth research work conducted by Dr. Obioma C. Nwankwo, entitled “Assessing the likely winner of the 2023 Nigeria presidential election using the voting patterns at military installations and environs“.
The researcher took a scientific path to analysing the elections by selecting only the results from military formations across Nigeria’s 36 states.
He said he did this because he was sure that those were locations where nobody could attempt ballot snatching or result sheet mutilation in the Polling Units.
From his results, Peter Obi won the presidential election even in places like Bauchi.
The election in Nigeria, which had been adjudged by local and international observers as faulty and deplorable, was fraught with manipulation of results, underage voting, voter intimidation and voter suppression.
The Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the electronic transmission of results from Polling Units was introduced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) aimed at minimizing rigging.
The failure to electronically transmit the results from polling units during the recent presidential election as promised by INEC, however, led to wide-spread belief of result-tampering making it difficult to know the true number of votes scored by the candiates.
Dr. Nwankwo, therefore, deployed the voting patterns at locations where the integrity of the voting results can be guaranteed as a surrogate to estimate the true votes scored by the candidates.
According to him, the voting results from locations where it is almost impossible for voter suppression, intimidation, underage voting and the manipulation of results to occur could be used to estimate the true number of votes scored by the candiates.
He said: “This method is not perfect, but could provide the best estimate in a system that is fraught with manipulations.
“Military installations and their immediate sorroundings meet these criteria because they are arguably the best locations where the integrity of the election results can be trusted.
“The military is also populated by the different ethnic groups that constitute the federation and should, therefore, to an extent, reflect the opinions of different ethnicities.
“Additionally, the political views of the communities that host these installations should also be captured because these polling units are not exclusive to the military.
“The official INEC result-reporting website was used for this study. The results from military installations and the immediate environment was obtained as follows:
Visit the INEC result reporting page: https://www.inecelectionresults.ng/elections and select the presidental election.
Then go to each state, local government and ward.
Look through all the polling units contained in a ward for keywords that denote a military installation or a close proximity to one. These keywords are words like army, navy, air force, barracks, NAOWA (Nigerian Army Officers’ Wives Association).
Document the local government, ward, polling unit code, name of polling unit, and the number of votes scored by LP, APC and PDP for the polling units that meet the inclusion criteria. The number of votes scored by the NNPP was also recorded for Kano State.
An alternative website, https://cvr.inecnigeria.org/election_results/findByCode, can also be used to check for election results if the polling unit code is known.”
Out of the total of 176,846 polling units, some 167,443 results have been uploaded as of the time of this publication.
Nwankwo continued: “The process involves browsing through almost all the polling units.
“It is possible that a few polling units with military installations were missed during the collection of data. However, none was intentionally excluded.
“The results of the voting results at military installations and the immediate sorroundings and those declared by INEC for the entire state are presented in the table below:
The total shows that Peter Obi (LP) scored 1,694.83 per cent of votes across the 36 states and the FCT, Bola Ahmed Tinubu (APC) got 787.99 per cent, while Atiku Abubakar (PDP) went home with 574.12 per cent votes.
When juxtaposed with the result announced by INEC, however, the outcome is startling.
The INEC results show that Peter Obi (LP) scored 1,033.56 per cent of votes across the 36 states and the FCT, Bola Ahmed Tinubu (APC) got 1,307.61 per cent, while Atiku Abubakar (PDP) went home with 1,046.15 per cent votes.
A former governor of Anambra State, Dr Chinwoke Mbadinuju, has been announced dead.
Mbadinuju was said to have died at the National Hospital in Abuja on Tuesday, at the age of 78.
Mbadinuju, who was fondly called “Odera”, was the Anambra governor between 1999 and 2003 under the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party.
A press statement signed by his son, Mr Cheta Mbadinuju, on behalf of the family on Tuesday, revealed that he died after a brief illness.
The statement read, “With heavy hearts but utmost gratitude to God for a life well spent, we announce the passing of our father, grandfather, uncle, friend and associate, Dr Chinwoke Mbadinuju, a former governor of Anambra State and elder statesman.
Odera, as he was fondly called, passed peacefully at the age of 78 years on the morning of April 11, 2023 at the National Hospital, Abuja after a brief illness, surrounded by his family and loved ones.
“At this trying time, we pray for God’s grace and mercy upon him and those left behind to mourn him. His funeral arrangements will be announced in due course by the family.”
Mbadinuju, was said to have governed Anambra at a time when the state experienced the highest level of political turbulent.
The former Anambra State Governor, Dr Chinweoke Mbadinuju popularly known as Odera, has died.
Mbadinuju who was Anambra State Governor from 1999 to 2003 died on Tuesday morning at the age of 78.
His family announced his demise in a statement signed by his son, Cheta Chinwoke Mbadinuju.
Cheta said the former governor died at the “National Hospital Abuja after a brief illness”.
It reads, “With heavy hearts but utmost gratitude to God for a life well spent, we announce the passing of our father, grandfather, uncle, friend and associate, Dr Chinwoke Mbadinuju, a former governor of Anambra State and elder statesman.
“ODERA as he was fondly called, passed peacefully at the age of 78 years on the morning of the 11th of April, 2023 at the National Hospital Abuja after a brief illness, surrounded by his family and loved ones.
“At this trying time, we pray for God’s grace and mercy upon him and those left behind to mourn him. His funeral arrangements will be announced in due course by the family.”
The All Progressives Congress (APC), on Monday, asked the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) in Abuja to dismiss the petition filed by the Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, against the emergence of Bola Tinubu as the president-elect in the 25 February election.
The APC, the 4th respondent, urged the PEPC to reject the petition in its notice of preliminary objection marked: CA/PEPC/03/2023 and filed at PEPC’s Secretariat, Monday night, by Thomas Ojo, a member of the party’s legal team led by Lateef Fagbemi in Abuja.
The party asked the tribunal to dismiss the petition with substantial cost on the grounds that it lacked merit and was frivolous.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Mr Obi, the 1st petitioner, and LP, the 2nd petitioner, had sued the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mr Tinubu, Kashim Shettima and APC as 1st to 4th respondents respectively.
The petitioners are seeking the nullification of the election victory of Messrs Tinubu and Shettima in the 25 February presidential poll.
NAN reports that while former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) came second with 6,984,520 votes in the election. Mr Obi came third with 6,101,533 votes.
Atiku and the PDP are also challenging the outcome of the poll.
In the petition marked: CA/PEPC/03/2023 filed by Mr Obi and LP’s lead counsel, Livy Ozoukwu, they contended that Mr Tinubu “was not duly elected by majority of the lawful votes cast at the time of the election.”
The petitioners claimed there was rigging in 11 states, adding that they would demonstrate this in the declaration of results based on the uploaded results.
Mr Obi and LP said INEC violated its own regulations when it announced the result despite the fact that at the time of the announcement, the totality of the polling unit results had yet to be fully scanned, uploaded and transmitted electronically as required by the Electoral Act.
Among other prayers, the petitioners urged the tribunal to “determine that, at the time of the presidential election held on February 25, 2023, the 2nd and 3rd respondents (Tinubu and Shettima) were not qualified to contest the election.
“That it be determined that all the votes recorded for the 2nd respondent in the election are wasted votes, owing to the non-qualification of the 2nd and 3rd respondents.
“That it be determined that on the basis of the remaining votes (after discountenancing the votes credited to the 2nd respondent) the 1st petitioner (Obi) scored a majority of the lawful votes cast at the election and had not less than 25 per cent of the votes cast in each of at least two-thirds of the states of the federation and the FCT and satisfied the constitutional requirements to be declared the winner of the Feb. 25 presidential election.
“That it be determined that the 2nd respondent (Tinubu), having failed to score one-quarter of the votes cast at the presidential election in the FCT was not entitled to be declared and returned as the winner of the presidential election held on Feb. 25.”
Responding, the APC asked the court to dismiss the suit on the ground that Mr Obi, the 1st petitioner, lacked requisite “locus standi” to institute the petition because he was not a member of LP at least 30 days to the party’s presidential primary to be validly sponsored by the party.
It said: “The 1st petitioner (Obi) was a member of PDP until May 24, 2022.
“1st petitioner was screened as a presidential aspirant of the PDP in Apni 2022.
“1st petitioner participated and was cleared to contest the presidential election while being a member of the PDP.
“1st petitioner purportedly resigned his membership of PDP on May 24, 2022 to purportedly join the 2nd petitioner (Labour Party) on May 27, 2022.
“2nd petitioner conducted its presidential primary on May 30, 2022 which purportedly produced 1st petitioner as its candidate, which time contravened Section 77(3) of the Electoral Act for him to contest the primary election as a member of the 2nd petitioner.”
The party argued that Obi was not a member of LP at the time of his alleged sponsorship.
The APC argued that “by the mandatory provisions of Section 77 (1) (2) and (3) of the Electoral Act 2022, a political party shall maintain a register and shall make such register available to INEC not later than 30 days before the date fixed for the party primaries, congresses and convention.”
It stated further that all the PDP’s presidential candidates were screened on 29 April 29, an exercise Mr Obi participated in and cleared to contest while being a member of the party.
It argued that the petition was incompetent since Mr Obi’s name could not have been in LP’s register made available to INEC at the time he joined the party.
The APC equally argued that the petition was improperly constituted having failed to join Atiku Abubakar and PDP who were necessary parties to be affected by the reliefs sought
“By Paragraph 17 of the petition, the petitioners, on their own, stated that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar came second in the presidential election with 6,984,520 votes as against the petitioners who came third with 6,101,533 votes;
“At Paragraph 102 (ii) of the petition, the petitioners urged the tribunal to determine that 1st petitioner scored the majority of lawful votes without joining Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in the petition.
“For the tribunal to grant prayer (iii) of the petitioners, the tribunal must have set aside the scores and election of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar,
“Alhaji Atiku Abubakar must be heard before his votes can be discountenanced by the tribunal,” it said.
The party said the petition and the identified paragraphs were in breach of the mandatory provisions of Paragraph 4(1)(D) of the 1st Schedule to the Electoral Act, 2022.
According to APC, Paragraphs 60 — 77 of the petition are non-specific, vague and/or nebulous and thereby incompetent contrary to Paragraph 4(1)(d) of the Ist Schedule to the Electoral Act, 2022.
It said that the allegations of non-compliance must be made distinctly and proved on a polling unit basis but none was specified or provided in any of the paragraphs of the petition.
“Paragraphs 59-60 of the petition disclose no identity or particulars of scores and polling units supplied in 18,088 units mentioned therein,” it added.
The party, therefore, argued that the tribunal lacked the requisite jurisdiction to entertain pre-election complaints embedded in the petition as presently constituted, among other arguments.
The APC urged the tribunal to dismiss the petition with substantial cost as the same was devoid of any merit and founded on frivolity.
