This is to specially appeal to Solution Government to reconsider the process of obtaining waiver for private motorcycle and the amount levied on impounded motorcycles in ARTMA office, Awka.
I write for public interest. I met one of the Electricians whose motorcycle for private use was impounded and moved to ARTMA office. The Electrician was told to pay N30,000 for the release of the motorcycle. For one month ,he has not been able to raise the money before I met him . I promised him that I will talk to the office .
I called an Officer in ARTMA office who told me that they have more than 1000 motorcycle in their office ,that the Electrician should pay N30,000 for his motorcycle, hence this appeal to reconsider the penalty to enable some genuine and private motorcycle users opportunity to process their wavers .
In my sincere opinion , Government should show empathy to the low income earners . I appreciate the security situation that necessitated okada ban in Anambra State ,however , execution of the ban should not affect the innocent motorcycle users . The hardworking citizens should be encouraged .
This is the Electrician phone number 08060253952
Thank you as I look forward to your timely intervention.
Ndubuisi Anaenugwu writes from Good Governance Ministry (GGM)
How exactly does the mind of Tinubu supporters work? What is their thought process, really?
Are they supporting Tinubu because they genuinely believe he is mentally and physically sound to preside over Nigeria or they just want to punish the over 200 million of us?
Here is a man whose real name you don’t even know. His academic record, age and ancestry are all shrouded in mystery. 20 years of his life was practically deleted from history. Health-wise, he is not good and you don’t even need a doctor to confirm that. Mentally, he is not in a good place. Signs of cognitive impairment are shown in every of his public outings. In terms of character and integrity, he is doing even worse. The U.S cocaine indictment is still fresh in our memory. He has refused to speak to Nigerian media, not even his own media. All he’s shown the Nigerian people is disdain. Today that he wanted to form Chatham House speaker, small questions that they asked him, he pushed them to his surrogates. The few ones he tried to answer such as the question on oil theft, he was blabbing about theft and the receiver.
Yet,
You who claim to love Nigeria and Nigerians, you who spent the past 7 years lamenting the walking disaster that is Muhammadu Buhari and all the pains and sorrows and deaths he’s brought us, you want to vote Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu whom you know very well is Buhari Plus and will spend all his years as President in U.K hospital attending to his health. You are willing to take this risk even after witnessing how our lives and businesses were ruined because we elected a sick Buhari who left governance to unelected shadowy figures masquerading as the cabal who used our collective destinies to play Russian roulette. You want to take Nigerians to this very tragic route again???
Quite frankly, you cannot love Nigeria and Nigerians and still support Tinubu to preside over this country after what we’ve suffered and are still suffering under Buhari. It’s simply not possible.
I mean, how can anyone who wish his/her fellow Nigerians well support Tinubu? How?
Let’s even look at Tinubu’s vice Presidential candidate, Kashim Shettima, one of the deadliest politicians this country has ever had the displeasure of producing. Do you guys even know how this man emerged as the governorship candidate of his party to finally become governor? Have you any idea? Have you? The man who won the primary was shot dead, paving the way for Shettima who was next in line. This was a man in whose governorship lodge here in Asokoro, Abuja, Kabiru Sokoto, the boko haram terrorist who masterminded the Christmas day bombing in a Catholic church in madalla, was captured.
As in, a sitting governor making his own governor’s lodge a safe haven for a terrorist who just finished k!ll!ng dozens of Christians in a church on a Christmas day!
This is the man who will be acting as President should Tinubu emerge top come 2023.
You know all these, yet, you are still supporting Tinubu and you call it politics. How?
How do you want to deliberately make a wrong choice that will have a terrible consequence of existential nature on over 200 million people and still call it mere politics?? People’s lives, their very existence, is mere politics to you?
A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Ray Morphy, has dumped the party and its presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu ahead of the 2023 general elections.
Morphy who was a former special adviser to the former APC National Chairman, Chief John Oyegun, said he is leaving the ruling party where he had made intellectual, material and financial contributions, all in a bid to help secure better governance but to no avail.
Morphy, an APC big wig in the Cross River State chapter, said the country deserves more “than the comedy of gaffes APC is trying to sell to Nigerians.”
Morphy was a leader of APC and member of the APC presidential council in 2019 and was also a member of APC National Campaign Councils to many states and a pioneer member of The Buhari Organisation (TBO).
In a statement he issued on Sunday in Abuja, Morphy said he has realised after much effort that public good is the last thing on the mind of the leadership of the APC, whether in government or out of it.
In the statement he titled: “I am not sorry”, Morphy said, “I am not sorry! I have lost many friends because they expected me to live a lie, they expected that I would like them, condemn the APC misrule in private and hail APC in public. I do not know how to speak with a forked tongue.
“I am not sorry that I left APC where I had made intellectual, material and financial contributions, all in a bid to help secure better governance for our! I realised after much effort that public good is the last thing on the mind of the leadership of the APC whether in government or out of it. Talking about public good to APC is like talking to a stone, so I took a walk.”
“I am not sorry that I did what my conscience bids me to do. I cannot support a ticket that does not take into cognisance the diversity of our country.
I am not sorry, that I happen to believe that this country needs better, indeed deserves better than the comedy of gaffes that the APC is trying to sell to Nigerians in order to further impoverish and already traumatised and despondent citizenry!
I am not sorry, because I am a seeker of what is right and true. This is what we do, we stand with the truth and part ways with those who prefer lies! We stand with the public and part ways with those who see nothing wrong with the mass sufferings of the citizenry.
“I am not sorry that I stand for what is good for our Nation.”
Former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has declared that he is in support of change of leadership from the North to South in 2023.
With this, Obasanjo is not backing the candidacy of the PDP’s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar.
He spoke at the weekend when the leadership of the apex Socio-Cultural group in Tiv land of Benue State, Mzough U Tiv (MUT) paid him a visit at his Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) Penthouse residence in Abeokuta, Ogun State capital.
Obasanjo said he was in support for the change of the leadership of the country from the North to the South, while the Middle-Belt region should continue to advocate for rotational presidency for the country.
If Nigeria is ready to get it right, the 2023 election should be a turning point. We should not go for emotion that will destroy us,” Obasanjo, who was conferred with the title of a “Great Warrior” of Tiv land by the socio-political group said.
He also said with the growing population of the country, the oil and gas sector could no longer feed the nation.
In a statement by his Special Assistant on Media, Kehinde Akinyemi, the former President enjoined Nigerians to see the country as for all, “to save it and restore to what God has created it to be,” Obasanjo who was responding to the President-General, Chief CP Iorbee Ihagh’s (rtd.) speech said.
According to him: “Only farming and agric business could tackle the nation’s growing population. Farming and agric Business is what will feed the nation.”
He called on the Tiv people to focus on farming and Agric Business, stressing that he had put the experience of having his farm burnt in Benue State behind him, as he hinted of having an industry established in the state next year.
Ihagh had stated that the reason for the group’s friendship visit “is basically to interface with you as our former Head of State, a political Pillar, a nationalist and elder statesman to appreciate your overwhelming love, passion and concern you have demonstrated over the Tiv people,” stressing that it was also historic.
He listed three prayers for the former President’s consideration, including the need for the establishment of a fruit juice industry in Benue state and inclusive National Politics.
Also, was the issue of Fulani herders attack on TIV land and position on the Nigerian power sharing formula.
According to him: “With regards to the current power equation in the country, we in the Mzough u Tiv in conjunction with the Middle Belt Forum had unanimously resolved for power shift from the North to the South for fairness, justice and a true federalism.
We want to call on your Excellency and other well meaning Nigerians to strictly adhere to the principle of rotation and distributive justice. If this is enforced, the middle Belt would also be assured of producing the next president come year 2031.”
Governors of the 36 states of the federation have said there is hardship in the land because of President Muhammadu Buhari has allegedly failed to fulfil his 2019 campaign promises.
The Minister of State for budget and national planning, Clement Agba, had blamed state governors for the nation’s poverty index, saying the governors had abandoned 72 per cent of Nigeria’s poor citizens in the rural areas, only to build airports and flyovers.
A day after the Minister’s comment, President Buhari also accused the governors of stealing from the local government allocations.
But reacting to the allegations on Saturday, the Director of Media and Public Affairs of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), Abdulrazaque Bello-Barkindo said the federal government should not blame the governors for its failure to lift Nigerians out of poverty, provide security and make life better for the people.
Part of the statement reads, “It is the federal government that, in its campaign message in 2019, promised to take 100 million Nigerians out of poverty. Today, records show that more than 130 million Nigerians are living below the globally accepted poverty line of a dollar a day. Under the current administration that Mr Clement Agba is minister, the national cash cow, the NNPC, had failed to remit statutory allocations to states in several months.
The situation had compelled governors to rely on other sources of revenue like; the SFTAS programme and other interventions anchored by the NGF, to fund states activities while monies budgeted for such federal ministries as agriculture, rural development and humanitarian affairs are not being deployed in the direction of the people.
The Minister who should be responding to a question demanding to know what he and his colleague, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, were doing to ameliorate the hardship Nigerians are facing attempted to defray the notion that rising levels of hunger and lack were peculiar to Nigeria.
“It is the opinion of the governors that the dereliction that the Minister is talking about lies, strictly speaking, at the doorstep of the federal government which he represents, in this scenario.”
The statement by the NGF further noted that the primary duty of the government is to ensure the security of lives and property, however, the current administration has been unable to fulfil this covenant with the people.
“First and foremost, the primary duty of any government is to ensure the security of lives and property, without which no sensible human activity takes place. But the federal government which is responsible for the security of lives and property has been unable to fulfil this covenant with the people thus allowing bandits, insurgents, and kidnappers to turn the country into a killing field, maiming and abducting people, in schools, market places and even on their farmlands.
This dereliction of duty from the centre is the main reason why people have been unable to engage in regular agrarian activity and in commerce. Today, rural areas are insecure, markets are unsafe, surety of travel is improbable and life for the common people generally is harsh and brutish.
“The question is, how can a defenceless rural population maintain a sustainable lifestyle of peace and harmony when their lives are cut prematurely, and they wallow permanently in danger? How does a minister whose government has been unable to ensure security, law and order have the temerity to blame governors?
Two states, Edo and Akwa Ibom had promptly responded to the vituperations of the Minister. According to Akwa Ibom State, what determines poverty and unemployment in a country is its economic policy, which is set, normally by the central government nationally.
Akwa Ibom insists that the federal government cannot abdicate its responsibility by blaming states and goes further to ask, albeit rhetorically, how economic policies in a state drive the dollar which determines almost every aspect of our national existence,” the e NGF noted.
Ahead of the forthcoming 2023 presidential election, the Labour Party, LP, candidate, Peter Obi, has finally released his long-awaited 62-page campaign manifesto.
The manifesto titled, “Our Pact with Nigerians: Creating a New Nigeria“, unveiled Obi’s proposed plans to lead Nigeria if elected as president.
This was made public on Saturday from Labour Party Secretariat in Abuja, Nigeria
Page 18 of the document itemized his economic plan founded on a shift from consumption to production by running a production-centred economy that is driven by an agrarian revolution and export-oriented industrialization.
Here’s a modest proposal to Ahmed Bola Tinubu, presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC): quit.
My suggestion is bound to strike some as quixotic, perhaps even as sheer political theater. But be assured I’m in deadly earnest. In the long run – and perhaps in the short run as well – it serves Tinubu (and Nigeria) to exit the stage.
To be clear, I’m not saying that the man is incapable of pulling off a victory in next February’s election. Going by some permutations, his prospects look as good as any other candidate’s. My proposal does not rest on his electoral odds. Even if he’s assured of coasting to victory – indeed, especially then – bowing out now would still be the best political favour he did himself. And – it goes without saying – the best outcome for Nigeria.
From the outset, Tinubu’s presidential ambition was based on an egoistic consideration. This is not necessarily a grave flaw. After all, a certain inflatedness of ego is often second nature to men and women who seek to run the lives of millions. In his case, however, this single-minded pursuit of the presidency has been marked by a shocking absence of awareness of his diminished physical and mental capacities.
On the stump, Tinubu has exhibited this diminishment to a scandalous degree. In speech after speech, he lapses into gibberish and gobbledygook. He’s racked up quite a collection of campaign videos where his lips produce sounds that are unintelligible in English or Yoruba. Were he a member of one of Nigeria’s myriad Pentecostal churches, he or his handlers could make the case that he had a facility for speaking in tongues.
Instead, Nigerians can see plainly what’s in view: a candidate so physically and mentally deteriorated that he utters nonsense. It’s not only that he’s become a factory of esoteric speech – what one might call Tinubu-isms. Just as frequently, he can’t remember the name of his political party.
Why does Tinubu’s verbal diarrhea matter? Why should we (and he) be concerned about his undeniable cognitive decline? The short and best answer is that Tinubu is doing himself incalculable harm and Nigerians an egregious disservice.
Tinubu has committed no moral offense in being ill. In fact, to ail is human. But a sick man’s first order of business is to mind his health. The running of a country, any country, is not for the faint of health. Should Tinubu win, he would be a burden on Nigeria – a tired, feeble chief executive. He would spend an inordinate amount of time gasping for breath and haunting hospital wards abroad. He would be utterly incapable of paying attention even to the most basic of his tasks as president.
He is visibly sick, a shell of himself from, say, ten years ago. Yet, Nigeria is sicker by far than he. And Nigerians deserve to be spared the rather familiar, unenviable experience of falling in the hands of indisposed men: chronic hospital patients playing at being leaders.
The country’s social memory is menaced by the litany of such broken men. There was the despotic Sani Abacha, a taciturn, hard-drinking, bespectacled playboy. There was Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, whose disappearance during his presidential campaign sparked rumors of death and produced one of the rhetorical classics of Nigerian politics when former President Olusegun Obasanjo placed him on speaker at a rally and asked, “Umaru, are you dead?” Then there’s the incumbent president, Muhammadu Buhari. When all is said and done, Buhari may have spent a quarter of his presidency visiting checking in and out of foreign hospitals.
It’s altogether possible that a physically fit and mentally alert Buhari would have ended up a presidential calamity. But it’s hard not to consider his incessant health woes as a factor in his disastrous presidency.
Nigeria’s line-up of infirm leaders has left a deleterious mark on the country’s morale and development. Even if he has path to victory – again, especially then – a clearly sick Tinubu should not wish himself on Nigerians.
Last week, Tinubu’s camp declared that their candidate would not debate fellow aspirants in a televised forum. Part of their argument was that both Tinubu and his running mate, Kashim Shettima, were too busy campaigning to participate in jousts with their opponents. Given Tinubu’s mounting flair for glossolalia and malapropisms, that position is understandable. A man with slipping possession of his speech would want to minimize occasions for public embarrassment. Understandable, provided that the man doesn’t attempt to pass off his deficiency and cowardice as a demonstration of virtue and wisdom.
Tinubu’s problems go beyond verbal miscues. He’s dogged by questions about his past, including an apparent drug-related criminal entanglement in the United States. In a sense, Nigeria has hardly ever encountered a more mystifying political aspirant. His very name remains a puzzle. Was he born with his given name, or did he “borrow” the name from another person? How old is he? Where did he attend elementary and secondary schools?
Nigerians are not going to stop asking these questions. A President Tinubu can count on being fodder for mocking profiles in the international media. In addition, he’s likely to become the butt of slashing jokes from domestic and foreign comedians. If he’s unable, or unwilling, to offer truthful answers to them, it behooves him to skedaddle out of the presidential race.
In the end, the best case for removing himself from the field is that – pretend as he may – Tinubu cannot be anything more than an absentee president, a leader in name only. He may well make his peace with that reality, his ego flattered by achieving what he’s imagined as his right: to take his turn as Nigeria’s president and commander-in-chief. But he stands to pay an exacting price, his ego smashed to pieces, if – by hook or crook – he becomes a mere presidential sinecure, unable to lift a finger as Nigeria nosedives into the precipice.
Governor Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra State said his administration is working with private providers to guaranty 24 hours electricity in major cities in the state over the next 30 months.
Soludo said this on Friday during a ceremony to present appointment letters to the newly recruited five thousand teachers for primary and secondary schools in the State.
While reeling out some of his achievement is office so far, the governor said, “In barely eight months in office, we have been vigorously and simultaneously implementing the five pillars of our peoples manifesto. We are fighting criminals and touts head on and they are on the run, security law and order are getting better by the day.
“Anambra is now a construction site with 230 kilometres of quality and strategic road constructions ongoing together with bridges and flyovers; we have launched regenerative agricultural revolution as well as reinventing the palm oil and coconut economy.
“Four industrial parks are being prepared, designed. We are working in partnership with private providers to guaranty 24 hours electricity in our major cities over the next 30 months. Street lights powered by solar are now replacing old technologies.”
Soludo said with the recruitment of new 5000 teachers for the primary and secondary schools, the era of schools without quality teachers is gone.
He added that with additional 2,500 teachers each in primary and secondary schools, the state will henceforth continue to meet best possible teacher student ratios.
The Governor assured the teachers that as a fellow teacher, the government will prioritise teachers and ensure they are motivated and empowered, adding that all the tools they need to work with will be provided.
The 500 new teachers are employed under the Anambra State Universal Basic Education Board and the Post Primary School Service Commission.
Residents of Ozzala Awada Obosi community, Idemili North local government area, Anambra state, Thursday, expressed fear of possible epidemic sequel to the stench emanating from mountains of refuse scattered all over the community for months now.
Consequently, some of the residents have started leaving the community in droves as no hope of evacuation of the refuse is in sight.
Mostly affected are streets/roads within Oganiru zone, prompting motorists plying the zone to look for alternative zones as Oganiru has become nightmare to motorists.
A landlord who pleaded anonymity told this paper that since the inception of the present administration of Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, they have not seen any tipper or other government vehicles evacuating refuse in the area.
“We only heard about refuse evacuation on radio and newspapers, we have never seen them in any of the streets around here. Sometimes, you may hear that a tipper passed at major roads without entering any street,” he stated.
Also reacting, another resident who identified himself as Okom Ajama, said that since the present administration took over the management of waste, they have been seeing hell.
“We started seeing hell since the present administration came on board, nobody cares about refuse evacuation in our area,” he stated.
Efforts made to contact the President General of the community, Chief Emeka Ezeodu, to comment on the matter proved abortive as he was not on seat as of the time of filing this report.
A member of the executive, who did not want his name in print, said that the leadership of the community was not in charge of evacuation of the refuse and as such could not render any assistance towards the evacuation.
He however, urged the State and Idemili North local government to come to their rescue now to avoid the incidence of death caused by epidemic.
In his own contribution, Mr. Sunday Igwe, accused the leadership of the community of being silent and not putting up any effort towards its evacuation because it is not its responsibility to evacuate the refuse.
He called on those in charge of refuse evacuation in the state to immediately come to the rescue of the residents.
