Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has predicted that, with the commissioning of new technology hub, which will be based in the University of Lagos, incredible ideas will soon begin to roll in from the university
“I know incredible ideas are going to come out of the University of Lagos. One of the reasons I’m so sure that is going to be the case is because, first of all, before we came here, we went to commission our new technology hub, which will be here in the University of Lagos. It is going to be built using containers and it’s going to take exactly three months to build.
“So, we were there earlier in the day just to take a look at it, and to see what is going on there, and I’m sure that it’s going to be a place of great creativity. Hopefully, we are going to do this in the six geo-political zones, starting here at the University of Lagos.”
Professor Osinbajo, who gave this hope on Friday at the launch of the Students Innovation Challenge in the University of Lagos, said: “we all know that the university is the best place for getting the best talents and that’s what is going to shape the future of our country.
“Every one of us is aware of that. And so, what the Federal Government did, is that we simply partnered with the UNDP, with BOI, with MTN, with Civic Foundation for Innovation and Access Bank, to come and do what we describe as the student challenge.”
The Vice President said that the student challenge is to find the best; the best innovation, the best technology ideas, the best creativity and the best creative ideas from students across Nigeria.
“Now, we are going to pick 37. But I’ve spoken to my partners and they say because of what they have seen today, we’ve got to move that up. So, we are going to pick 50, we’re adding 13 more. So, there are some here today who might get, even if you don’t get into the first pack, you should be able to get into that additional one. We are definitely going to do it in such a way that as many of the great ideas as possible, get a chance to be tested commercially, they get a chance to be supported.
“That’s why just listening to the six that were randomly picked, doesn’t necessarily mean they are the best that were here today. They were just randomly picked. I thought those ideas were fantastic; I thought the ideas were great! And I know that there are so many other people with great ideas all over here.
“That’s why I have decided that I’m going to take photograph with these 40 who are behind me here. And the simple reason is that I know that these guys are going to be famous. They are going to be rich one day and I don’t want them to forget me. So, that’s the reason I’m going to take this photograph with them.
“But to everyone else, let me say that it is an absolutely exciting time to be alive, this is the best time. You know, people talk about the good old days, they keep saying Oh the good old days, but it was Obama who said, always be suspicious of people who are telling you about these good old days, the best days are here. The future is right here. And welcome to that future!”
The heat seems turning against some lawmakers in the National Assembly over the frictions that arose between the executive and the legislature on the controversial 2018 national budget.
A group known as Coalition of Katagum Youths and Students’ Organization based in Azare, Bauchi state has passed a vote of no confidence on the member representing Katagum federal constituency of Bauchi state, Hon. Ibrahim Mohammad Baba, ahead of the 2019 elections.
This was just as the coalition said there was no hiding place for political enemies of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Chairman of the coalition, Muktar Mohammed told news men that the coalition is aware of the alleged padding of the 2018 budget, according to the President, even when Baba is on acting capacity as chairman of the House committee on public accounts.
“Our decision to passed vote of no confidence on Rep Baba is irreversible and supreme in Katagum constituency because the budget padding is an attempt to scuttle President Buhari’s 2019 bid.”
The chairman said that the 2018 budget padding saga has great consequence and has set a negative economic precedence in Katagum constituency.
“We are demanding Baba to tender a convincing statement to clear himself of his alleged role over the budget padding or risk being ousted in 2019 because he was not sent to allegedly conspire against President Buhari.”
The coalition maintained that there is no hiding place for Baba come 2019, following the lawmaker’s alleged alliance with Senator Rabiu Kwankwanso.
He blamed Baba for distancing himself from the constituents in the aftermath of the Azare market inferno.
“It’s inhuman because the lawmaker has neglected those victims of fire disaster on Azare and refused to accompany President Buhari during his sympathy visit to Bauchi state.”
The Federal Government has taken another measure aimed at containing the possible invation of Nigeria by members of the dreaded Islamic State (IS) by deploying a very senior police officer in the person of Assistant Inspector-General of Police (AIG), Danjuma Muhammad, to take charge of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport Police Command.
Indications recently emerged that leaders of members of the ISIS have started bringing into Nigeria, extremists and airplanes are reportedly being targeted.
The Lagos police Command’s spokesperson, DSP Joseph Alabi, told newsmen today, Sunday that the deployment of an AIG to take over the helms of affairs at the nation’s busiest airport was strategic.
According to him, AIG Danjuma Muhammad is an experienced officer who has served in many commands and formations.
He said that the deployment would improve safety and security of travellers and other airport users.
“The transfer of a very senior ranking officer to the airport command is very strategic; the objective is to ensure that nothing untoward occurs here.
“The AIG has assumed duties and has warned officers attached to the command that he would not tolerate laziness, idleness and dereliction of duties,’’ the spokesman said.
Alabi said that the new helmsman had read the riot act to touts parading within the airport environment, adding that he assured travellers and other airport users that adequate measures had been put in place for their safety and security.
“The command is working with the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria and other security agencies to ensure that our airport is safe.
“Our advice is that travellers and other airport users should remain vigilant and law-abiding as well as comply with the new security measures in the airport environment.”
The new man took over from Abdullahi Ali, a Commissioner of Police, who retired recently.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has challenged the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, clear himself of corruption charges with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
In a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, PDP said that Oshiomhole lacks the rectitude to speak in public as a leader at any level, whatsoever, until he clears the allegations that he diverted billions of naira meant for the people of Edo State while he was governor.
The main opposition party stressed that since the petition against him at the EFCC is in the public domain, the new national chairman would do the APC, Muhammadu Buhari presidency, the EFCC as well as himself a lot of good by quietly submitting himself for investigation and possibly prosecution.
According to the party, since one of the campaign footstool upon which APC was elected into office is fighting corruption, it will be incongruous for Oshiomhole to go about his new assignment with allegation of corruption, even as tiny as a strand of hair.
“It is also instructive for the new chairman to understand that Nigerians are no longer inclined to sophistry, illogical arguments, deceits, contrivance and recourse to abuse as a method of campaign.
“As such, the PDP would be prepared for engagements that have the potency of rescuing our people from the hunger and starvation which the APC has sunk them,” it said. The party said the essence of Oshiomhole’s emergence as President Muhammadu Buhari’s sole candidate was not lost on Nigerians as the presidency imposed him as a pliable instrument to frustrate other would-be presidential aspirants of APC extraction and hand the ticket to President Buhari, who, obviously is afraid to stand a presidential primary due to his failures in office.
“With Saturday’s charade, APC and its federal government, which claims to have zero tolerance for corruption, have eaten their vomits, confirming that they have been hypocritical and trending on lies, deception and propaganda.
“With the outcome of the Saturday’s convention, the APC has kissed internal democracy goodbye in the selection of its candidates at all levels as the national leadership, led by people burdened with corruption allegations, cannot but submit to the whim and caprices of those who granted them official protection from prosecution.
“President Buhari and his handlers should however note that manipulating the APC convention and seizing the party’s presidential ticket cannot help them as Nigerians are now fully rallying on the platform of the repositioned PDP in their quest for a new president, who truly has the competence to effectively run a united, secure and prosperous nation, come 2019.”
Former governor of Edo state, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, was destined to be national chairman of the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) at this intersection in the nation’s political evolution. His emergence approximates a part of the philosophy in the muses of H.L. Detridge that “we are all victims of our actions; our destinies are controlled by the cosmic rolls of the dice, the whims of the stars and the vagrant breeze of fortune that blows from the windmills of the gods.”
Divine elements, apparently working in harmony with existential considerations as well as the avuncular disposition and approbation by President Muhammadu Buhari, had culminated in the consensual coronation of Oshiomhole at the party’s June 23 national convention in Abuja. The magnitude of the strategic political concession that produced the Oshiomhole consensus also bore the obligatory imprimatur of the party’s 24 state governors who provided the essential validation that resolved the previously contentious issue in his favour.
From the initial audacious notices of intention to vie for the position of national chairman by no fewer than five persons and the acrimonious outlooks that the scramble for the position had assumed, huge pressure had been piled on the party under the leadership of Buhari who had to act expeditiously and sagaciously by making two down-to-earth and back-to-back interventions. The first was to overrule the decision by the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party to extend its tenure by a year by calling for congresses and convention, thus obviating a legal conundrum.
The second and, perhaps, more strategic intervention was the expression of his preference for Oshiomhole to take over from Chief John Odigie-Oyegun as the new navigator of the APC ahead of and beyond the 2019 general election. Significantly, Buhari did not impose Oshiomhole by presidential fiat. His candidature merely and justifiably enjoyed lofty presidential recommendation. That recommendation was shorn of political shenanigans. There was no need for Buhari to dissimulate and vacillate on the issue, having been convinced that the party needed the Oshiomhole persona at this time.
The president had placed the issue on the table for interrogation and critical reflections by other influential stakeholders. The fact that all the contentious issues eventually resolved themselves in Oshiomhole’s favour derived from the stakeholders’ objective considerations; whereas, a potential flash point could be located in Oyegun and Oshiomhole’s aspirational exertions. There was no doubt that Oyegun had party apparatchiks who could have provided the rampart for his possible re-election. But, having provided the leadership compass to the APC from 2014, the shape and texture of his leadership capacity could not escape critical appraisal in the circumstance of the contemporary governance issues and the vagaries of the 2019 burgeoning political nuances.
The question would then arise: did Oyegun’s leadership style, as exemplified in Buhari’s first term, bear great and appropriate relevance in the planned prosecution of the 2019 general election and the concomitant political gerrymandering? The answer must have informed the final gravitation by some state governors, who were initially insisting on Oyegun, to embrace the political correctness of Oshiomhole’s candidature as a presidential fait accompli. Concurring with Buhari’s judgment was political wisdom. Dismounting their ego horse was in pari materia with the constructive and productive ramifications of the president’s preference.
In fact, respect for Buhari’s preference remains quite significant in the post-convention political interactions and party administration. For a governing party with a president who is revered and sure-footed in the exercise of power, it would have been foolhardy for party operatives and their back-end sponsors in government to dig in their feet in their go-getting bid to upstage the president’s strategic applecart. Besides, the president, as the poster child of the administration, receives the approbation and disapprobation for both actions and inactions. It is within the context of this cosmopolitan reality that Buhari seeks to guarantee his date with history.
As the unofficial candidate of his party, Buhari is already on the cusp of history and he would not want the electoral tragedy that consumed the former president, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, to happen to him. Disloyal antics of the leadership of Jonathan’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had largely contributed to his defeat and his becoming the first incumbent to be so demystified in the annals of presidential elections in Nigeria. Buhari knows that it would be farcical if that happens to him. This perception underpinned the choice of a restless, can-do and surefooted Oshiomhole and will continue to validate his appropriateness for the position.
By and large is the fact that Oshiomhole understands the magnitude of the task ahead. Even before the national convention, he had fixed his eyes on the bigger picture of consolidating the Buhari legacies and appropriating the people’s buy-in for massive electoral advantage in 2019. While the atmospherics of victory around him were titillating his followers, he was not only clear-headed but also in serious dialogue with himself and in a series of across-the-board conversations with prolific minds on how to grow support for the party and the president. Indeed, he knew from the outset that the chosen enterprise would not be a tea party.
Therefore, beyond the song and dance of his ultimate coronation, Oshiomhole’s concern is how to lock in the vast majority of votes required in renewing Buhari’s mandate in the 2019 presidential election. That is how to prove that the confidence reposed in him by the president and the party was not misplaced. That is the burden that Oshiomhole bears. There is a mission to accomplish. Even though the objective conditions that produced Buhari’s presidency under Oyegun’s chairmanship in 2014 differ from the conditions that obtain now, there is a sense in which Oshiomhole would be inclined to want to surpass Oyegun’s accomplishments. That is the spirit: to build incrementally and purposively on his predecessor’s legacies.
Indeed, having consummated the ultimate leadership deal, Oshiomhole’s immediate task is to chart a trajectory towards a renewed, vibrant and robust political configuration in the APC. He is expected to deploy his persuasive powers and negotiating skills in the execution of his responsibilities and the initial chore is to resolve the problematic issue of the new Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP) that stares the APC in the face like a veritable bugaboo. He is obligated to build a united political family in strategic counterpoises to the dialectics of oppositional politics.
Oshiomhole is also expected to espouse and expound socio-political and economic issues within the context of APC’s manifestoes and governance philosophies. In driving pro-people national conversations, he will be defining and giving bites to the party’s electioneering onslaught against the opposition ahead of, during and after the 2019 presidential election. With a massive capacity for oration, he is expected to persuasively sell Buhari’s re-election campaign promises to Nigerians by energizing and sustaining narratives that are essentially pro-Buhari and anti the leading opposition party and its presidential candidate.
However, his post-election exertions, once he delivers Buhari, will centre fundamentally on deploying the platform of his position as national chairman to elucidate government’s policies on both national and global platforms. He will provide necessary defence to the actions and inactions of the Buhari administration within the contexts of prevailing conditions that have given rise to them. The president and the party can rest assured in Oshiomhole’s capacity to prolifically promote the issues involved in governance for citizens’ clear understanding. On that score, Oshiomhole, who has already put his nose to the grindstone in both frontline and rearguard tasks that will conduce to utilitarian benefits of the Buhari administration, will not disappoint.
Ojeifo, editor-in-chief of The Congresswatchmagazine, wrote via ojwonderngr@yahoo.com
Finally, the eagle has landed with the emergence of former governor of Edo state, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, as the national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC). By that strategic political orchestration and stratagem, the APC, under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari, has sounded the ultimate Nunc Dimittis for the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The opposition must be wishing that this had not happened. Oshiomhole’s chairmanship of the governing APC is a masterstroke in the contemplation of a revitalized winning machine ahead of the crucial 2019 presidential election in which Buhari, as the expected candidate, continues to be PDP’s nemesis and Waterloo.
It is a platitudinous fact that the PDP never wanted the APC to remain cohesive in the hope that it could profit from its internal squabbles and divisions in the build-up to next year’s general election. That was the reason it had continued with its negative profiling of the APC and its jejune antics of taunting the APC as incapable of holding congresses and national convention to elect its national executive committee (NEC). That narrative had, sardonically, become a platform on which the battered opposition strove to draw political relevance. Unfortunately, its rash of criticisms had only portrayed it as dimwitted. And generally, the PDP has now outlandishly reduced opposition politics to petty tittle-tattle and confabulation, poking around in the APC’s internal affairs when issues that directly affect the welfare, security and wellbeing of the nation and her citizenry are blowing in the wind.
Therefore, the manner in which the PDP and its noxious frolics could not escape essential stigmatization with regard to its unimaginative interference in APC’s internal affairs is the same manner in which its so-called quick responses to APC’s governance issues cannot escape indictment as products of frustration birthed by the historic and sensational termination of its megalomania in the 2015 presidential election. Its rodomontade that it would rule Nigeria for the next 60 years had suffered a short circuit. Its 60-year rule dream got terminated in its sixteenth year in power. The decision by Nigerians to sign a social contract with the APC is at the bottom of PDP’s histrionics. Unable to absorb the shock, and in a frenzied bid to stage a come-back to power to continue the robin hood road show, it has resorted to ridiculous and lugubrious acts of propaganda and blackmail.
But one thing has been very evident in the corpus of criticisms that the PDP has hurled at the APC and Buhari’s administration since inception: the criticisms are all sheer bunkum and gobbledygook oozing out of the belly of damaged and compromised party machine, whose leaders lack the moral high ground to pontificate about corruption. But surprisingly, the PDP, through its publicists, has been laboring hard to skew the corruption narrative against the APC and Buhari, whose moral magnitude has received national and international approbation; a leader, who typifies the moral conscience of the administration and the moving force of the anti-corruption war.
It is in the context of the sheer preposterousness of PDP’s antics that the sensibilities of Nigerians who have become seized of the facts of monumental corruption and mindless looting that charaterised the sixteen years of the PDP government get daily assaulted and ghastly bruised. The fact that the PDP has the gumption to sermonize about propriety in official conduct questions and ridicules our sense of morality. The opposition party has sunk so deep into the corruption morass for it to be able to challenge the APC. Its records of malfeasance and sleaze are sordid. Its integrity capital has been greatly discounted. There is no iota of positivity in its kitty to show to a manically bewildered citizenry.
The PDP cannot come to equity because it does not have clean hands. The totality of the political machine is soiled. The party’s unconscionable and wicked strategy to charge the APC-led federal administration with the mundane issues and primordial sentiments of religion and ethnicity in order to diminish the single-minded effort by Buhari to confront and dismantle the odious legacies of corruption, insecurity and mismanaged economy inherited from it, are reprehensible. Herein is the fallacy of PDP’s oppositional politics. It is obviously luxuriating in the aqua of hocus-pocus, thinking that Nigerians have forgotten so soon how its government mindlessly plundered the nation’s patrimony.
There is no doubt that the leading opposition party has nothing new to offer. It has thus become a compulsive irritant, knowing full well that it cannot electorally rebound due to Buhari’s writ-large credentials and characters of financial prudence and integrity. In addition, the prospects of a much more unified party under the chairmanship of a hard-hitting Oshiomhole have raised the bar far higher than the PDP had expected. Until June 23, the PDP had been indulged by the party’s NEC under the urbane and unassuming leadership of Chief John Odigie-Oyegun. That political indulgence had served as an oxygen mask for the prostrate PDP, which, at the time, should have been put where it rightly belongs through precise and sustained narratives by the APC.
Had Oshiomhole been the chairman at that period when the nation was daily regaled by revelations of corrupt acts perpetrated by the PDP and officials of its government particularly from 2011 to 2015, he would have robustly deployed the platform of his office to further deconstruct the nature of the plundering administration and the characters that superintended it. Today, Oshiomhole has stepped in as national chairman to the discomfiture of the opposition: all gloves are off for bare-knuckled fights with the floundering opposition. It is too late for the PDP to stop the macabre dance. Regardless, Oshiomhole will take the wind out of its sail, deploying his huge capacity for wits and grits.
Viva Nigeria! Viva APC! Viva Buhari! Viva Oshiomhole! Welcome to a new era in political party administration. The combination of Buhari and Oshiomhole would produce robust government-party leaderships that would be complementary in their vast flourish. Oshiomhole is not ready to take prisoners. He is in the mood to completely decimate the opposition. He has the intellectual magnitude, the oratorical clout and the sheer fecundity to deploy the power of logic in the articulation and elucidation of party manifestoes and government policies. He is very efficient and utilitarian. He will consistently and persistently intervene in very coherent defence of policy decisions and choices by the federal government.
Indeed, the almost four years of tolerating the irritability of the PDP are over for good. The opposition is advised not to joke with Oshiomhole. Enough of political sarcasms and innuendoes that had been thrown as barbs at the APC and Buhari for a period of eon! PDP’s characteristic criticisms that had bordered essentially on ad hominem; that had been highly tendentious most times and, at other times, vitriolic and incendiary should be moderated if the opposition must enjoy little peace. In fact, the PDP is now in between the devil and the deep blue sea. Whether it becomes irresponsible or not, it should know that it has Oshiomhole to contend with per time.
The role of the opposition is not, as it were, to cry wolf where there is none or to become irresponsible in raising the alarm before international organisations without verifiable factual bases nor is it to play on our centrifugal proclivities at the expense of our centripetal and agglutinating fulcrum. The PDP and Oshiomhole’s opposite side- Prince Uche Secondus- will come under the sledge hammer if they continue with these odious tactics. Clarifications: the APC-led administration is not averse to criticisms, but the criticisms must be constructive.
Honourabe Obahiagbon, a former member of the House of Representatives, wrote in from Benin.
This past week, 47-year old Justice Allen H. Loughry II, of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals in the US, was sentenced to 395 years in prison and $5.5 million in fines after being hit with a 22-count indictment on numerous charges of fraud and corruption. This is a textbook example of how to permanently lock up miscreants in public office.
Nigeria is yet to join the community of civilized nations where no one is above the law. In civilized societies, people in positions of public trust get tougher sentences than those who are not high profile criminals. The question which comes up every time among Nigerians whenever a politician or a judge gets into trouble or jailed overseas is: When will Bukola Abiku Mesujamba Saraki go to jail? A history that is not removed is bound to be repeated. Mesujamba Saraki is the most colorful and controversial corrupt politician dead or alive in Nigeria today.
The corruption, fraud, extortion, and other malfeasance perpetrated by the Saraki Family Corruption Dynasty is well documented and well known to Nigerians. We don’t need to list them in alphabetical order. Until few weeks ago when the Offa bank robbers named Mesujamba Saraki as their patron saint, Saraki’s crime skyscraper seems to have disappeared from the radar of Nigeria’s criminal justice system. His legendary disobedience of our laws has brought out rage of fatigue about our ancient criminal justice system. Governors, senators, House Reps, LG chairmen, councilors and other corruption titans are getting away with more stealing. The looting spree has long ceased to amaze Nigerians.
The Saraki Family Corruption Dynasty has violated every goddamn law in the book. It took every imaginable form of illegal and illicit business. That no member of the Saraki Family Corruption Dynasty has gone to jail is a political mystery. Mesujamba Saraki has been a politician of nine lives, surviving a series of crimes and scandals which surely would have ended up anyone else’s career and freedom. Mesujamba Saraki’s crime history is the cancer at the heart of so many Nigeria’s problems today. Through looting, embezzlement, fraud, and outright plundering of Kwara State and the federal treasury, and the liquidation of two or three banks, he has single handedly destroyed jobs and holds back growth costing our economy trillions of Naira every year.
His greed and graft have trapped Nigeria’s poorest in the most desperate poverty as Mesujamba Saraki and his looting gang syphon off funds and prevent hardworking Nigerians revenues and benefits of growth that are rightly theirs. Vital resources for our schools, hospitals, infrastructures, safety and security, healthcare and social services have been stolen as Mesujamba Saraki cleaned out our treasury. Saraki has been able to get away with all these crimes because Nigeria is being run by Mafia-style cartels by political bosses and corrupt business people.
Yes, Nigerian Senate harbors Mafia-style criminals similar to Al Capone’s mob in 1920s America. Corruption stretches from the very top to the very bottom in our society. No other person like Mesujamba Saraki has singularly reduced Nigeria to a colossal collection of impoverished masses. Mesujamba Saraki is genetically venal, ruthlessly ruthless, more corrupt, more shameless, and more brazen. And with a weak president, a National Assembly of thieves, and a dysfunctional judicial system, Saraki will continue to call the shots. When will Bukola Abiku Mesujamba Saraki go to jail?
Bayo can be reached on: bjoluwasanmi@gmail.com. [myad]
Former governor of Edo state, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, was destined to be national chairman of the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) at this intersection in the nation’s political evolution. His emergence approximates a part of the philosophy in the muses of H.L. Detridge that “we are all victims of our actions; our destinies are controlled by the cosmic rolls of the dice, the whims of the stars and the vagrant breeze of fortune that blows from the windmills of the gods.”
Divine elements, apparently working in harmony with existential considerations as well as the avuncular disposition and approbation by President Muhammadu Buhari, had culminated in the consensual coronation of Oshiomhole at the party’s June 23 national convention in Abuja. The magnitude of the strategic political concession that produced the Oshiomhole consensus also bore the obligatory imprimatur of the party’s 24 state governors who provided the essential validation that resolved the previously contentious issue in his favour.
From the initial audacious notices of intention to vie for the position of national chairman by no fewer than five persons and the acrimonious outlooks that the scramble for the position had assumed, huge pressure had been piled on the party under the leadership of Buhari who had to act expeditiously and sagaciously by making two down-to-earth and back-to-back interventions. The first was to overrule the decision by the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party to extend its tenure by a year by calling for congresses and convention, thus obviating a legal conundrum.
The second and, perhaps, more strategic intervention was the expression of his preference for Oshiomhole to take over from Chief John Odigie-Oyegun as the new navigator of the APC ahead of and beyond the 2019 general election. Significantly, Buhari did not impose Oshiomhole by presidential fiat. His candidature merely and justifiably enjoyed lofty presidential recommendation. That recommendation was shorn of political shenanigans. There was no need for Buhari to dissimulate and vacillate on the issue, having been convinced that the party needed the Oshiomhole persona at this time.
The president had placed the issue on the table for interrogation and critical reflections by other influential stakeholders. The fact that all the contentious issues eventually resolved themselves in Oshiomhole’s favour derived from the stakeholders’ objective considerations; whereas, a potential flash point could be located in Oyegun and Oshiomhole’s aspirational exertions. There was no doubt that Oyegun had party apparatchiks who could have provided the rampart for his possible re-election. But, having provided the leadership compass to the APC from 2014, the shape and texture of his leadership capacity could not escape critical appraisal in the circumstance of the contemporary governance issues and the vagaries of the 2019 burgeoning political nuances.
The question would then arise: did Oyegun’s leadership style, as exemplified in Buhari’s first term, bear great and appropriate relevance in the planned prosecution of the 2019 general election and the concomitant political gerrymandering? The answer must have informed the final gravitation by some state governors, who were initially insisting on Oyegun, to embrace the political correctness of Oshiomhole’s candidature as a presidential fait accompli. Concurring with Buhari’s judgment was political wisdom. Dismounting their ego horse was in pari materia with the constructive and productive ramifications of the president’s preference.
In fact, respect for Buhari’s preference remains quite significant in the post-convention political interactions and party administration. For a governing party with a president who is revered and sure-footed in the exercise of power, it would have been foolhardy for party operatives and their back-end sponsors in government to dig in their feet in their go-getting bid to upstage the president’s strategic applecart. Besides, the president, as the poster child of the administration, receives the approbation and disapprobation for both actions and inactions. It is within the context of this cosmopolitan reality that Buhari seeks to guarantee his date with history.
As the unofficial candidate of his party, Buhari is already on the cusp of history and he would not want the electoral tragedy that consumed the former president, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, to happen to him. Disloyal antics of the leadership of Jonathan’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had largely contributed to his defeat and his becoming the first incumbent to be so demystified in the annals of presidential elections in Nigeria. Buhari knows that it would be farcical if that happens to him. This perception underpinned the choice of a restless, can-do and surefooted Oshiomhole and will continue to validate his appropriateness for the position.
By and large is the fact that Oshiomhole understands the magnitude of the task ahead. Even before the national convention, he had fixed his eyes on the bigger picture of consolidating the Buhari legacies and appropriating the people’s buy-in for massive electoral advantage in 2019. While the atmospherics of victory around him were titillating his followers, he was not only clear-headed but also in serious dialogue with himself and in a series of across-the-board conversations with prolific minds on how to grow support for the party and the president. Indeed, he knew from the outset that the chosen enterprise would not be a tea party.
Therefore, beyond the song and dance of his ultimate coronation, Oshiomhole’s concern is how to lock in the vast majority of votes required in renewing Buhari’s mandate in the 2019 presidential election. That is how to prove that the confidence reposed in him by the president and the party was not misplaced. That is the burden that Oshiomhole bears. There is a mission to accomplish. Even though the objective conditions that produced Buhari’s presidency under Oyegun’s chairmanship in 2014 differ from the conditions that obtain now, there is a sense in which Oshiomhole would be inclined to want to surpass Oyegun’s accomplishments. That is the spirit: to build incrementally and purposively on his predecessor’s legacies.
Indeed, having consummated the ultimate leadership deal, Oshiomhole’s immediate task is to chart a trajectory towards a renewed, vibrant and robust political configuration in the APC. He is expected to deploy his persuasive powers and negotiating skills in the execution of his responsibilities and the initial chore is to resolve the problematic issue of the new Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP) that stares the APC in the face like a veritable bugaboo. He is obligated to build a united political family in strategic counterpoises to the dialectics of oppositional politics.
Oshiomhole is also expected to espouse and expound socio-political and economic issues within the context of APC’s manifestoes and governance philosophies. In driving pro-people national conversations, he will be defining and giving bites to the party’s electioneering onslaught against the opposition ahead of, during and after the 2019 presidential election. With a massive capacity for oration, he is expected to persuasively sell Buhari’s re-election campaign promises to Nigerians by energizing and sustaining narratives that are essentially pro-Buhari and anti the leading opposition party and its presidential candidate.
However, his post-election exertions, once he delivers Buhari, will centre fundamentally on deploying the platform of his position as national chairman to elucidate government’s policies on both national and global platforms. He will provide necessary defence to the actions and inactions of the Buhari administration within the contexts of prevailing conditions that have given rise to them. The president and the party can rest assured in Oshiomhole’s capacity to prolifically promote the issues involved in governance for citizens’ clear understanding. On that score, Oshiomhole, who has already put his nose to the grindstone in both frontline and rearguard tasks that will conduce to utilitarian benefits of the Buhari administration, will not disappoint.
Ojeifo, editor-in-chief of The Congresswatchmagazine, wrote via ojwonderngr@yahoo.com. [myad]
Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives Yussuff Lasun
The Deputy Speaker, House of Representatives, Lasun Yussuff, has commended the manner in which the two-day national convention of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) was conducted.
Lasun, who spoke to news men on the sidelines of the Convention today, Sunday, argued that this is the first time in the history of Nigeria that a political party would have a national chairman that served out his term without threats or outright removal.
The lawmaker, who congratulated President Muhammadu Buhari for displaying exemplary leadership quality and for sustaining a cordial relationship with the immediate past national executive of the party, also praised the immediate past Chairman, Chief Odigie Oyegun for his political dexterity that played a vital role through the merger process leading to the victory of the APC in the 2015 presidential elections as well as his cordial working relationship with other leading political stalwarts in the APC, such as Chief Bisi Akande, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and Chief Ogbonaya Onu among others in navigating the party through turbulence.
Lasun said that when the book of political party formation and administration would be written, copious credits and references will be given to them.
The Deputy Speaker while congratulating the newly elected National Chairman of the APC Adams Oshiomole said the new party chairman was coming with a loaded credential not only as the immediate past two term governor of Edo state but a man who made his name out of agitation based on fairness and justice from the Labour community.
Lasun also congratulated the other members of the new executive of the party praying that Allah will guide them and help them to deal squarely and fairly with whatever outstanding issues that may not have been totally sorted by the past exco.
The Deputy Speaker looks forward to the profound oversight and guidance of the Oshiomole led new leadership in the forthcoming Osun State Gubernatorial primary elections, where the people will be allowed to exercise their free discretion to vote through their recognized delegates of the party at the primary election just as it was in Edo state, and recently in Ekiti state for an aspirant that represents their hope stressing that “this is sine-qua-non to our victory at the general election.”
He also congratulated the chairman of the 2018 Convention committee, Governor Badaru of Jigawa State and the entire members of the committee “for organising a very transparent and near hitch free event that has further elevated the profile of our great party”.
He described the convention as “a new high for the party, a boost in the profile of the party and an additional impetus and point of attraction for those still contemplating joining the party and pride to existing members.” [myad]
President Muhammadu Buhari in a handshake with the new national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chairman Comrade Adams Oshiomhole as the 2018 APC National Convention comes to a close today, Sunday at the Eagle Square in Abuja. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (left), waits for his turn to congratulate the new helmsman. Photo by Sunday Aghaeze. [myad]
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The heat seems turning against some lawmakers in the National Assembly over the frictions that arose between the executive and the legislature on the controversial 2018 national budget.
Of Oshiomhole And The Fallacy Of PDP’s Oppositional Politics, By Patrick Obahiagbon
Finally, the eagle has landed with the emergence of former governor of Edo state, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, as the national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC). By that strategic political orchestration and stratagem, the APC, under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari, has sounded the ultimate Nunc Dimittis for the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The opposition must be wishing that this had not happened. Oshiomhole’s chairmanship of the governing APC is a masterstroke in the contemplation of a revitalized winning machine ahead of the crucial 2019 presidential election in which Buhari, as the expected candidate, continues to be PDP’s nemesis and Waterloo.
It is a platitudinous fact that the PDP never wanted the APC to remain cohesive in the hope that it could profit from its internal squabbles and divisions in the build-up to next year’s general election. That was the reason it had continued with its negative profiling of the APC and its jejune antics of taunting the APC as incapable of holding congresses and national convention to elect its national executive committee (NEC). That narrative had, sardonically, become a platform on which the battered opposition strove to draw political relevance. Unfortunately, its rash of criticisms had only portrayed it as dimwitted. And generally, the PDP has now outlandishly reduced opposition politics to petty tittle-tattle and confabulation, poking around in the APC’s internal affairs when issues that directly affect the welfare, security and wellbeing of the nation and her citizenry are blowing in the wind.
Therefore, the manner in which the PDP and its noxious frolics could not escape essential stigmatization with regard to its unimaginative interference in APC’s internal affairs is the same manner in which its so-called quick responses to APC’s governance issues cannot escape indictment as products of frustration birthed by the historic and sensational termination of its megalomania in the 2015 presidential election. Its rodomontade that it would rule Nigeria for the next 60 years had suffered a short circuit. Its 60-year rule dream got terminated in its sixteenth year in power. The decision by Nigerians to sign a social contract with the APC is at the bottom of PDP’s histrionics. Unable to absorb the shock, and in a frenzied bid to stage a come-back to power to continue the robin hood road show, it has resorted to ridiculous and lugubrious acts of propaganda and blackmail.
But one thing has been very evident in the corpus of criticisms that the PDP has hurled at the APC and Buhari’s administration since inception: the criticisms are all sheer bunkum and gobbledygook oozing out of the belly of damaged and compromised party machine, whose leaders lack the moral high ground to pontificate about corruption. But surprisingly, the PDP, through its publicists, has been laboring hard to skew the corruption narrative against the APC and Buhari, whose moral magnitude has received national and international approbation; a leader, who typifies the moral conscience of the administration and the moving force of the anti-corruption war.
It is in the context of the sheer preposterousness of PDP’s antics that the sensibilities of Nigerians who have become seized of the facts of monumental corruption and mindless looting that charaterised the sixteen years of the PDP government get daily assaulted and ghastly bruised. The fact that the PDP has the gumption to sermonize about propriety in official conduct questions and ridicules our sense of morality. The opposition party has sunk so deep into the corruption morass for it to be able to challenge the APC. Its records of malfeasance and sleaze are sordid. Its integrity capital has been greatly discounted. There is no iota of positivity in its kitty to show to a manically bewildered citizenry.
The PDP cannot come to equity because it does not have clean hands. The totality of the political machine is soiled. The party’s unconscionable and wicked strategy to charge the APC-led federal administration with the mundane issues and primordial sentiments of religion and ethnicity in order to diminish the single-minded effort by Buhari to confront and dismantle the odious legacies of corruption, insecurity and mismanaged economy inherited from it, are reprehensible. Herein is the fallacy of PDP’s oppositional politics. It is obviously luxuriating in the aqua of hocus-pocus, thinking that Nigerians have forgotten so soon how its government mindlessly plundered the nation’s patrimony.
There is no doubt that the leading opposition party has nothing new to offer. It has thus become a compulsive irritant, knowing full well that it cannot electorally rebound due to Buhari’s writ-large credentials and characters of financial prudence and integrity. In addition, the prospects of a much more unified party under the chairmanship of a hard-hitting Oshiomhole have raised the bar far higher than the PDP had expected. Until June 23, the PDP had been indulged by the party’s NEC under the urbane and unassuming leadership of Chief John Odigie-Oyegun. That political indulgence had served as an oxygen mask for the prostrate PDP, which, at the time, should have been put where it rightly belongs through precise and sustained narratives by the APC.
Had Oshiomhole been the chairman at that period when the nation was daily regaled by revelations of corrupt acts perpetrated by the PDP and officials of its government particularly from 2011 to 2015, he would have robustly deployed the platform of his office to further deconstruct the nature of the plundering administration and the characters that superintended it. Today, Oshiomhole has stepped in as national chairman to the discomfiture of the opposition: all gloves are off for bare-knuckled fights with the floundering opposition. It is too late for the PDP to stop the macabre dance. Regardless, Oshiomhole will take the wind out of its sail, deploying his huge capacity for wits and grits.
Viva Nigeria! Viva APC! Viva Buhari! Viva Oshiomhole! Welcome to a new era in political party administration. The combination of Buhari and Oshiomhole would produce robust government-party leaderships that would be complementary in their vast flourish. Oshiomhole is not ready to take prisoners. He is in the mood to completely decimate the opposition. He has the intellectual magnitude, the oratorical clout and the sheer fecundity to deploy the power of logic in the articulation and elucidation of party manifestoes and government policies. He is very efficient and utilitarian. He will consistently and persistently intervene in very coherent defence of policy decisions and choices by the federal government.
Indeed, the almost four years of tolerating the irritability of the PDP are over for good. The opposition is advised not to joke with Oshiomhole. Enough of political sarcasms and innuendoes that had been thrown as barbs at the APC and Buhari for a period of eon! PDP’s characteristic criticisms that had bordered essentially on ad hominem; that had been highly tendentious most times and, at other times, vitriolic and incendiary should be moderated if the opposition must enjoy little peace. In fact, the PDP is now in between the devil and the deep blue sea. Whether it becomes irresponsible or not, it should know that it has Oshiomhole to contend with per time.
The role of the opposition is not, as it were, to cry wolf where there is none or to become irresponsible in raising the alarm before international organisations without verifiable factual bases nor is it to play on our centrifugal proclivities at the expense of our centripetal and agglutinating fulcrum. The PDP and Oshiomhole’s opposite side- Prince Uche Secondus- will come under the sledge hammer if they continue with these odious tactics. Clarifications: the APC-led administration is not averse to criticisms, but the criticisms must be constructive.