“Pain is part of gain. No pain, no gain. The years of wastage and all that we have done wrong have finally caught up with us.”
These were the words of the General Overseer of Latter Rain Assembly, Pastor Tunde Bakare, who spoke to news men on Friday after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Bakare, who was Buhari’s running mate in the 2011 presidential election on the platform of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) said that he is sure that the President Buhari’s administration would, in due time, respond to the yearnings of Nigerians.
“I will like to appeal to all Nigerians that we should just excise a bit of patience. This change will not become chain that will tie all of us down.
“Change for good takes time and we should just exercise a little bit more of patience. We trust that government is listening and the leaders are listening too and they will respond to the yearnings and aspirations of Nigerians.”
Bakare said that when one is driving in the wrong direction and suddenly realises one’s mistake, there would be a lot of suffering in returning to the right direction.
“Pain is part of gain. No pain, no gain. The years of wastage and all that we have done wrong have finally caught up with us.
“All we are praying for is wisdom for this government to think right and to do the right things, so that gradually, we can begin to come out of the woods.” [myad]
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has expressed appreciation to the judiciary over the Appeal Court judgment that upheld the election of Abia State governor, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu.
The court set aside the judgment of the Federal High Court, Abuja, presided over by Justice Okon Abang.
In a statement, the party’s Chief Spokesman, Mr. Dayo Adeyeye, described the ruling of the appellate Court as a triumph of the rule of law and victory for democracy.
“What transpired at the Court of Appeal on Thursday has, once again, rekindled our trust in the judiciary as the last hope of the common man.”
The Court of Appeal had, in Abuja on Thursday, upheld the election of Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu as governor of Abia.
Justice Morenikeji Ogunwumiju led four other Justices of the appellate court to unanimously set aside the June 27 decision of the Federal High Court which sacked Ikpeazu from office.
The others judges are Justice Abubakar Yahaya, Justice Philomena Ekpe, Justice Ibrahim Bdliya and Justice Saidu Hussaini.
The court delivered judgments on six appeals filed by interested parties in the governorship tussle.
Ikpeazu had challenged his removal on account of an allegation of falsification of his tax papers.
The governor joined the judgment creditor, PDP, INEC and Friday Nwosu as the respondents. Uche Ogah,
Ogunwumiju held that the trial court erred and his decision was pre-judicial.
She also held that it was wrong for the plaintiff to have approached the trial court with an originating summons without affidavit evidence.
“The appeal has sought the leave of court to decide whether the court was right to have based its decision on suit that was brought by way of originating procedure.
As for us here, the suit should have been by way of a writ of summons as it required affidavit evidence to proof a criminal allegation of tax falsification.
The trial court was hostile and pre-judicial as the judge shifted the burden of proof from the plaintiffs to the defendant (Ikpeazu),” she said.
Ogunwumiju further held that no cause of action was established when the suit was instituted.
She said Nwosu, one of the candidates at the December, 2014 primaries of the party had filed his suit before Ikpeazu’s name was submitted to INEC as PDP governorship Candidate.
“In fact the allegation should have come before the governorship election being a pre-election matter.
Looking at the substance of the case, the appellant was not to blame for any error noticed in the tax certificate submitted to election body.
The information has not established any grounds to show that the governor used it to gain advantage on the rest contestants,” she said.
Ogunwumiju said: “the worrisome aspect of the trial decision was that the judge imported words into the PDP guidelines to gain appropriate grip on the appellant”.
“It is my opinion that Justice Okon Abang sat in his Chamber to speculate what Ikpeazu earned while he served as a Civil Servant in Abia State.
The annoying part is that, he went further to bar the Director of Abia State Revenue Authority, James Okogie, from giving evidence, describing the move as an afterthought.
This can simply be described as an abortion of justice as the governor was not giving fair hearing to defending himself.
In the light of the above, the decision of the trial court dated June 27 is set aside along with the consequential order.
By this, we mean Ikpeazu is returned as governor of Abia State,” she held.
Also delivering judgment on the governor’s appeal on the jurisdiction of the trial while a notice of appeal was served it, Justice Philomina Ekpe, held that the jurisdiction of the lower court seized immediately the appeal was entered.
“Justice Abang failed to act in line with the doctrine of ‘stari decisis’. He was compelled to transfer the record of the case to the Court of Appeal for determination the moment he was notified of the pending appeal,” Philomina said.
The judge had on July 8 insisted that he had jurisdiction to hear a motion for stay of execution of his earlier judgments delivered even after the appeals against the judgments had been entered.
Ekpe also held that the trial court wrongly interpreted the provisions of Order 4(10) and (11) of the Court of Appeal rules in that circumstance.
“The trial judge should have been aware that he lacked jurisdictions to interpret the provisions of the Court of Appeal being the rules of a superior court,” she said.
NAN reports that the other appeals filed by Obasi Mba, Nwosu, Chukwuemeka Mba were all decided in favour of the governor with N100, 000 each to also be paid by them. [myad]
Nigeria Students studying across Turkish private universities have been moved by the Turkish Government to public Schools where they will pay very little or no tuition fees at all.
The private schools were shut down by the government in the wake of the failed coup attept aimed at toppling the government.
The Ambassador of Turkey to Nigeria, Mr. Hakan Cakil who spoke on Friday when he paid a courtesy visit on the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu in his office, in Abuja said that all students affected by the closure have been moved to public varsities nearest to them. Ambassador Hakan Cakil assured the Minister that no Nigerian students would be allowed to suffer the closure, and that any students who wished to return to Nigeria will be doing so as a matter of choice.
Malam Adamu expressed profound gratitude to the Turkish Government for paying special attention to the well being and safety of Nigerian students in Turkey.
The Minister assured Ambassador Hakan that the government of Nigeria will continue to work hard to deepen educational cooperation with Turkey as well as boost the overall bilateral relationship between the two countries. [myad]
Twitter has blacklisted the accounts of Niger Delta Avengers, Boko Haram, as well hundreds of thousands others. The online social media suspended additional 235,000 accounts since February.
The accounts were suspended for violating policies related to violent threats and promotion of terrorism, the company said on Thursday.
Total suspensions related to violence and terror are now at 360,000 since the middle of 2015.
Meanwhile, up to 80 percent are being suspended daily since last year, Twitter said, thanks in part to proprietary “spam-fighting” tools.
The company said it has made progress in:
shortening the amount of time that violators are on Twitter,
reducing their followers and,
disrupting the ability of offenders to immediately return to Twitter.
It said that it has bolstered its team to review complaints of extremism, as well as buoyed collaborations with law enforcement, other social platforms and international nongovernmental agencies.
Rival network Facebook has also said it has a “hard line” toward terrorism and terrorists.
A Facebook company leader told The Wall Street Journal earlier this year after it removed a profile of San Bernardino shooter Tashfeen Malik even as it restricted 32,100 instances of a photo depicting terror victims in Paris.
The news comes after Twitter made headlines for its free-speech policies.
It had reporting from BuzzFeed News said it failed to block harassment for non-celebrity users.
Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo later implied the report was “laughably false while Twitter said it would continue to make the platform a “safer place.”
Niger Delta Avengers are hardline militants in the Niger Delta region known for destroying oil facilities in its “Operation Zero Economy”
Boko Haram, on the other hand, is the Islamist terror group that has massacred about 20,000 people and rendered about 12 million homeless. [myad]
The Campaign Chairman of the Donald Trump Campaign Team, Paul Manafort, has resigned. The resignation of Manafort has been confirmed by Trump himself.
However, no reason was given for the resignation of the campaign chairman for the Republican presidential candidate.
“This morning Paul Manafort offered, and I accepted, his resignation from the campaign,” Trump said in a statement.
He added: “I am very appreciative for his great work in helping to get us where we are today and in particular his work guiding us through the delegate and convention process.” [myad]
Omu-Aran, Irepodun Local Government Area of Kwara has been hit by a flood of divorce as no fewer than 38 cases of divorces have been recorded between January and August, 2016.
Some of the reasons adduced for the petitioners, included lack of love, desertion, uncaring attitudes and assaults.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that 28 petitions were filed at the Area Court while the remaining 10 were at the Upper Area Court and High Court. Similarly, 15 marriages were dissolved, 11 amicably resolved, while 12 others were still pending.
It was noted that incidence of petition for divorce in the area is on the decline compared to the 46 of such petitions filed within same period in 2015. It was learnt that incessant irreconcilable marriage differences had become a source of worry to magistrates and judges in the area.
An Area Court judge in Omu-Aran, Abolade Banigbe, said the menace had continued to pose serious challenges to the judiciary in the community.
Banigbe said the nation’s challenge of insecurity was further compounded as the number of youths involvement in crime occasioned by marriage dissolution was on the increase.
“Such had become a big problem for all the tiers of government to address and accord top priority in the interest of national development,’’ he said.
Banigbe called for the strengthening of the Citizens Mediation and Conciliation Centres in the state capitals to ensure prompt and amicable settlement of marriage differences.
He also called for the establishment of branches of the centres at the grassroots for easy access to their services.
Banigbe urged couples to learn to respect the vows and tenet of their unions to avoid unwarranted litigation.
“Its when the people of the communities chose to imbibe peaceful coexistence that we can also have peace of mind as judges and magistrates serving in the localities,’’ he said. [myad]
Even as you continue playing the ostrich over your role in the crisis threatening the stability of the country, things have turned uglier in the space of these three weeks. Your children continue to destroy vital economic infrastructure, even as the few that have seen the light openly named you and other leaders in the south as being sponsors of the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA). They did not only mention your name but prominently so.
The open letter by the author goes thus:
Dear Chief Edwin Kiagbodo Clark,
CALL YOUR CHILDREN TO ORDER
Permit me to again write you another letter in the space of three weeks since my last open letter to you. I would have exercised some patience and see how well the issues I raised in the previous communication are being treated. However, the bruise I called your attention to has festered into an open wound that could become gangrenous if we continue to treat it as a mere sore.
In my earlier letter, I asked you and other elders in the Niger Delta to stop kicking against military deployment to stop the destruction of oil and gas installations in the area, which you are opposed to based on self-interest and greed. The appeal was for the elders of the area to allow the military to deploy to the Niger Delta since there is still time to clean up the mess that you and other elders created.
Your response to that letter, in which you accused me of being vicious, wicked and not a patriotic Nigerian for stating the truth, failed to articulate any possible suggestion that would contain the activities of these misguided children of yours but rather elected to focus on the anticorruption crusade of the current administration.
Even as you continue playing the ostrich over your role in the crisis threatening the stability of the country, things have turned uglier in the space of these three weeks. Your children continue to destroy vital economic infrastructure even as the few that have seen the light openly named you and other leaders in the south as being sponsors of the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA). They did not only mention your name but prominently so.
Given the venom you spewed pre-2015 General Elections about how the country would burn if your godson, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, was not re-elected; your denial of any links with the NDA is laughable. The most positive reaction it drew from Nigerians was to feel vindicated that they have been proven right. It turned out you shouldn’t have bothered distancing yourself from the NDA or denying what the Reformed NDA (RNDA) said about you and other ingrates from the region. The RNDA specifically narrated how the present destabilization plan was hatched, put on hold when Dr Jonathan conceded defeat and again reactivated when corruption investigations and trials were brought against members of that administration of which you were the one that called the shots.
Despite your denial and half-hearted assurances to call your rampaging children to order, they continue to bomb economic infrastructure and have taken implementation of your agreed plan to the its next phase with a threat to declare secession from the Federal Republic of Nigeria by October 1st. This shows it is you who is unpatriotic.
You of all people know the significant of October 1st and we are not talking about Nigeria’s Independence Anniversary. Rather it was the day your godson, Dr Goodluck Jonathan became a spokesperson for terrorists on October 1, 2010 when he stridently refuted responsibility for a bomb attack they carried out in Abuja. His complicity in issues of insecurity is well a known fact. It must also be on record that it was that infamous blast that opened the floodgate of bombing in Nigeria.
Also recall that when a former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo had to hold a meeting with Dr Jonathan in the presence of Pastor Enoch Adeboye and Bishop David Oyedepo to resolve his numerous letters that went unacknowledged by your godson. Chief Obasanjo accused Dr Jonathan based on security report that the then President was training and arming the youths through NIMASA, then headed by Akpobolokemi. What did you ever do about that ugly episode? Nigerians expect that you will use your influence among persons identified as sponsors of NDA to ask Jonathan or either of these highly respected clergymen to tell the world what Jonathan’s answer to Obasanjo was.
You did nothing about the revelation that your youths were being armed and it will be redundant to now urge you to call your children to order in this instance that they want to declare a problem republic because even a brain damaged youth without the benefit of education should know what treason is and its attendant consequences. If the threat of secession is being bolstered by the pre-election cache of weapons, militants that trained as commandos under the pretext of amnesty rehabilitation, and worthless assurances from some foreign powers, then it means yourself, elders and militants of the Niger Delta failed to read up the relevant portions of international laws and conventions that allow nations to defend their territorial integrity when the need arises. So I nonetheless urge you to call your children to order and that is assuming they can still listen to you.
As you would have noticed, the Nigeria Police Force has issued a warning that your boys must not dare the Federal Government by going ahead with the provocative plan. This must tell you that the beat has changed: while there were appeals to allow the military deploy to the Niger Delta to arrest the sabotage of oil and gas installations there would be no need for such protocols should your children proceed with the manic plan. It is one thing to be detonating explosives that security operatives have now confirmed to have been planted in preparations for blowing up the country over Dr Jonathan’s election loss, it is another thing completely to contemplate treason.
A republic must necessarily have a capital and government with officials so there will be no doubt as to who to arrest for treason and where to get them. This is what makes what your children are contemplating seriously different from the cowardly hide and seek of blowing up pipelines. It is also what should give you concerns that once they expose themselves for arrest a next logical step is that the connection of the elders to them would be exposed.
You must advise your colleagues not to risk using a few riffraff as place holders for the declaration of secession so that security agents won’t be able to make connections with the real sponsors of the plan. History will not be kind to the elders if they repeat the folly that gave rise to militancy and militant warlords. Their latest plan risks creating the emergence of a new power bloc peopled by thugs whom you falsely think you are arming to harass the Federal Government. These same weapons being placed in the hands of the youths will soon turn against those that supplied them.
Yourself and fellow Niger Delta elders must now begin to contemplate how to eat that humble pie when October 1st arrives and there is no republic to present to the masses that you brainwashed into being used as tools. You must also worry that the dawning culture of accountability will force the hundreds of thousands of your impoverished people to start asking why they live in squalor and your children and grandchildren live in gilded opulence. This is the real revolution that will occur as opposed to your expectations that the poor will again offer themselves as cannon fodder – sacrificial animals – to preserve the life of entitlement that Niger Delta elders and militant leaders live.
If you find time to call a press conference to address the issues raised in this letter, kindly do well to objectively digest the issues so that your reply does not shot off at a wrong tangent. What is needed from you is to call your children to order. They must stop all attacks, disband all illegal group they have formed and stop thrash talking the rest of the nation. These must happen without anyone expecting goodie bags as happened under the watch of your godson, it distorts the economy and rewards criminals.
In case you have not noticed, fiscal federalism is something that all constituent ethnic nationalities in Nigeria are clamouring for and many of them are doing it without resort to violence. If we allow you get away with what you are asking for then we will be confirming our ethnic nationalities as inferior to yours simply because we do not have oil wealth. We are not.
. Agila, a traditional minister, contributed this piece from Benue State. [myad]
Life is all about memories. It is the only thing we are left with when flesh and spirit depart the earthly plane, and we can do no more than remember the life of the departed, through memories of times and moments shared, and their deeds in their lifetime. I received a phone call and a whatsapp message announcing the death of Justin Abuah, popularly known to all and sundry as O.J. Abuah, and the world seemed as if it had stood still for a few minutes. He was one of my media officers when I served as President Goodluck Jonathan’s Special Adviser, Media and Publicity and as official spokesperson; after the retirement of another dependable officer, Musa Aduwak, he replaced Aduwak as Director of Information in the department. I left him behind in the Villa in 2015, hale and hearty, an asset to the department, an efficient, service-oriented, disciplined, and devoted civil servant who could be relied upon at all times for high quality delivery. And now they say he is gone. Last Sunday. Just like that. It is painful, shocking and sad. OJ, what happened?
I had some difficulty initially adjusting to the ways and habits of civil servants when I got to the Villa in 2011. I found them too laid back, too conspiratorial, and always on the lookout for reward, or what they call motivation. But what I found most exasperating was the lack of initiative. Coming from the private sector, I was used to members of a team doing their part and not waiting to be directed, knowing that any delay could affect the rest of the team and the quality of service delivery. But I met a situation whereby civil servants believed they always had to be directed to carry out even the same routine tasks that they undertook daily.
“SA, you didn’t give me any instruction”
“How? You and I discussed this matter and you know what to do, you do it everyday.”
“You didn’t tell me to go ahead”
I always felt like hitting the roof. I didn’t see any reason why a media assistant had to be reminded to take a podium to a presidential event, microphones, batteries, or why a photographer or cameraman needed to be reminded of pre-announced events, or why an information officer could not use the initiative to prepare drafts. I used to get worked up and I would scream: “civil servants, what is wrong with you people!” I was perhaps prejudiced. I had been warned as soon as I assumed office that I should not make use of the civil servants. I was advised to sideline them and bring a team of my own who would get things done. I didn’t think this was right. If there is a full-fledged department in place, with paid staff, assigned different tasks, and who have been in the system forever, the best thing to do is to get them to do their work and not undermine them. It may have taken a few months to establish a rhythm, but I eventually won the confidence of the departmental team to create a very resourceful and creative communications and media team that ensured efficient coverage of the President’s activities. OJ Abuah as Director of Information and as the most senior staff, as well his predecessor, Aduwak, were most effective in helping to achieve this objective.
OJ became the bridge between the general staff and me. I eventually figured out that apart from their love of directives, civil servants worship hierarchy. They have this inherited military era mentality that pushes them to function when they are given express orders. It was better if the order was documented, and OJ had his ways of pushing them. This took a lot of pressure off my shoulders, up to the point that at a time, whenever I shouted “civil servants!” the staff around would also say “SA!” or “The great Abati” and we would all burst out laughing. We had great fun in the long run. The civil servants were all individually and collectively my backbone.
It was just a matter of discovering their talents and getting them to work: there was a lady for example who was so excellent in protocol matters who later left us, there was another who always got things done particularly during foreign trips because once she showed up, all the men around could never say No to her, we later recruited a multilingual chap who was also so good in protocol matters that the protocol department used to report him to me to keep him away from their territory, and of course the diligent quartet who monitored the print, electronic and digital media and prepared daily reports and analyses, and the army of other staff, the foot-soldiers – from secretary to drivers and boom operators- who covered every event. I want to thank OJ for his friendship and support and also for his readiness to take responsibility on behalf of the other staff whenever anything went wrong or when other departments blamed the media department for a microphone that did not work, a podium that stood in the way or photographers and cameramen blocking people’s views.
OJ had my back. He had been in the Presidency since Dodan Barracks. He had served under different Presidents and Media Advisers. This placed him in a vantage position to avail me of institutional memory. He could tell me what previous advisers did under certain circumstances, and the expectations of those who occupy the office of President. He also knew the intrigues within the palace, and the scent of inter-departmental rivalry. Because he had been in the system for long, nothing escaped his notice and if anything was going on, somehow he would get to know. He always tipped me off. He drew my attention to intrigues even before they blew into the open. Let no one joke about it: the Nigerian Presidency is a nest of malevolent intrigues. And running the media and publicity department could be very much like being in a wrestling ring, because it is one job that everyone claims to know.
People whose responsibility it wasn’t wanted to arrange media interviews, manage the President’s appearance, organize his public speaking, take his photographs, record his speeches, and determine how speeches and press statements should sound. Someone even came up with what became known as “the space theory”, meaning anybody could do anybody’s job, once they could create a space to do it. It got so challenging at a point, and on one occasion, a cleaner accosted me early morning and told me: “Oga Abati, you are working hard, I see you for television, I no know say you sabi speak English like that. Make you dey talk more hen. But dis your staff and journalists…” I didn’t know what to say in response. But in the face of it all, OJ helped to protect the integrity of the department. He was loyal and dutiful.
He not only knew the system, he drew my attention to many rules and regulations. If something could not be done, he would bring out the rules book and state the position of government. In the end, I left the matters related to civil service rules and regulations to the civil servants and stayed with professional and technocratic aspects of the work. Every outsider who finds himself in a political position in government needs a man like OJ. He was nobody’s sycophant. He would tell you as it is. He had a critical mind, but he was nevertheless fair-minded and constructive, and there was no reason to doubt his loyalty to government and country.
He was above everything else, intellectually gifted. He had been a journalist before joining the State House media department, and he remained a damn good reporter and editor. He had a nose for news and a sense of what can work or not in a media copy. He wrote well too, his prose was spare but precise, his sentences were clean, his thoughts were clear. OJ could discuss literature, politics, history, geography, economics and a wide range of other subjects. We spent hours in my office whenever our schedule was light, debating issues in a friendly atmosphere. In the course of duty, I also met many knowledgeable and experienced civil servants, men and women who toil daily to keep the Nigerian system going, but who are often unheard and ignored. OJ was one of the most impressive. He was an ideal information officer, talented and experienced, mature and disciplined, knowledgeable and smart. It was not surprising that he passed his promotion examination in 2014 and became a Director. I consider his death a major loss to the department and the Nigerian civil service.
Gifted as he was, he was nevertheless a very quiet and impeccably gracious man, to be found moving quietly close to the wall, as if he did not want to be noticed in his regular, stylishly spacious batik caftan. Even if he was angry, you would hardly hear his voice. He was self-effacing almost to a fault, and he was intensely private. It was always difficult to reach him after office hours or on weekends, but whenever he was around or available, he got the job done beyond the call of duty and earned everyone’s respect. He never talked about his family – the closest I got was when we went to a bookshop in New York once and he bought books for his son whom he said was studying in the UK. He did not invite anyone to his house. Nobody knew which church he attended or whether or not he had ceremonies to which he invited guests. Some of the staff even thought he was queer. If he was in pains, he never showed it. If he was ill, nobody knew. He was just himself. People like him are difficult to replace. He was the type of man who would never have asked for a tribute, but he deserves this and more tributes to come. So sad, he is gone… [myad]
Lagos has emerged as an oil producing state, the first outside the Niger Delta region. It is Aje oil wells 1, 2, 4 and 5 which fall within the 200m isobaths.
Yinka Folawiyo Petroleum Company Limited has since commenced oil production from Aje oil field which is said to be the first time oil is being produced outside the Niger Delta.
The Chairman, Indices and Disbursement Committee, Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, Alhaji Aliyu Mohammed, who spoke when he visited Governor Akinwunmi Ambode at the Lagos Governor’s office, Lagos House, Ikeja, confirmed that four of the five oil wells discovered in Lagos belong to the state.
He said however that the fifth oil well could not have belonged to the state since its location fell outside the approved distance.
Aliyu Mohammed who said that his delegation of the committee was in Lagos to verify crude oil and gas production from the recently discovered Aje oil wells, said the verification by the committee and its recommendation would facilitate the disbursement of 13 per cent derivation fund to the state in line with the Nigerian Constitution.
According to Mohammed, as part of procedure and in pursuant to its constitutional mandate, the commission set up an inter-agency technical committee which comprised the commission, the Department of Petroleum Resources, Office of the Surveyor General of the Federation and the National Boundary Commission to determine the location of the Aje oil wells.
“The technical committee recommended that for the purpose of derivation as spelt out under Section 162 (2) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), as well as the provision of the Allocation of Revenue Act, 2004,
“As a result, the commission and members of the inter-agency committee had to embark on this working visit to conclude the process. Please, note that Aje oil well 3 falls beyond the 200m isobaths and therefore cannot be legitimately attributed to Lagos State.”
Governor Ambode described the visit as historic. He pointed out that the visit marked the beginning of the official step that would take Lagos to the final destination as an oil-producing state.
Ambode said, “The discovery of oil in Lagos State is significant for Nigeria. It is the first time that oil would be produced outside the Niger Delta.
“It means that a new path to diversification is what we are now witnessing. We will also encourage other states to start activating their mineral deposits to expand the Internally Generated Revenue.” [myad]
Former Director-General of the defunct National Sports Commission (NSC), Dr. Amos Adamu, has said that he never expected that the Nigeria Dream Team VI would go as far as semi finals in the soccer at the ongoing Rio Olympic Games in Brazil.
The national U-23 team on Wednesday lost 0-2 to their German counterparts in the semi-finals of the football event of the ongoing Rio Olympics.
Adamu said: “Nigerians should be proud of these boys. In the face of the hostility they encountered, they performed better than my expectations.
“I never thought they would qualify from the group stage talk less of getting to the semifinals.
“They gave their all as you can see in their matches. They played against a more technically inclined Germany. The better side won. In sports, you win some, you lose some.
“I’m so proud of them because irrespective of the drama surrounding their stay in Rio, they kept together. I believe we can get the bronze medal with God and luck on our side.
“I have never seen a team so focused as this team. I salute the courage of the players.
“They were not disgraced. They fought gallantly.”
Also, former international, Friday Ekpo, told NAN that the Nigerian team would have done better in the match against Germany.
Ekpo said the players did not approach the match with a winning mentality, saying that the Germans were beatable if the players were determined in their approach.
He said that the team’s inability to convert most of their chances also was partly responsible for the outcome of the match against Germany.
The ex-international, however, commended the team for their performance so far, advising the players to put in their best against Honduras in the third place match.
Kayode Tijani, a sports analyst, said the team played a good game though they missed some good chances that could have seen them through.
Tijani said the second half saw a cold game by the team as there was no desire to win.
He noted that the second goal by the Germans was scored in the last minutes because the players’ spirits dropped.
Tijani said that there is still hope for the team to win the bronze against Honduras.
Meanwhile, the Head Coach of Dream Team VI, Samson Siasia, has admitted that the U23 team did not deserve to play in the finals of the ongoing Rio de Janeiro Olympic soccer games.
Siasia based his assessment on the performance of the team.
He said: “I am disappointed. Even though we had glaring chances, we couldn’t score. We failed to untilise them. The German team did better. It is a shame.
“We did not have the right spirit for the game. May be most of them stayed up late and did not observe rest when they should. When you reach this level of the competition, you do not need anybody to teleguide you on how to conduct yourself to scale through. They had the chances.
“Am I going to get into the field of play to score for them?
“We are going to review the match and think of a strategy to win the third place match.
“That is what it has boiled down to. It is better than nothing.
“I am disappointed with the team. We did not play like people hungry to play in the finals at the famous Maracan Stadium.”
The captain of the team, John Mikel Obi, supported Siasia’s position.
Obi said: “We did not play well. We don’t deserve to be in the finals.
“In Saturday’s third place match against Hunduras, we are professional players, hopefully, we can win a medal.”
The players, who were obviously distraught after a woeful performance that left many Nigerians in Sao Paulo disappointed, apparently took it out on the Nigerian journalists, who met them at mix zone, by shunning interaction.
Unlike their German counterparts that allowed their journalists to ask questions, the Nigerians simply walked past.
“We are not in the mood for questions,” they said.
“This is rather disrespectful,” Mitchell Obi, the President of International Sports Press, quipped.
The standard ethical practice the world over is to at least show some respect or decently ask to be excused from interviews. That did not happen.
The Nigerian team lost 0-2 to Germany, the same 0-2 margin they lost to the Colombians within the same Corinthian Arena. [myad]
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Chief Edwin Clark, Call Your Children To Order, By Okanga Agila
Even as you continue playing the ostrich over your role in the crisis threatening the stability of the country, things have turned uglier in the space of these three weeks. Your children continue to destroy vital economic infrastructure, even as the few that have seen the light openly named you and other leaders in the south as being sponsors of the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA). They did not only mention your name but prominently so.
The open letter by the author goes thus:
Dear Chief Edwin Kiagbodo Clark,
CALL YOUR CHILDREN TO ORDER
Permit me to again write you another letter in the space of three weeks since my last open letter to you. I would have exercised some patience and see how well the issues I raised in the previous communication are being treated. However, the bruise I called your attention to has festered into an open wound that could become gangrenous if we continue to treat it as a mere sore.
In my earlier letter, I asked you and other elders in the Niger Delta to stop kicking against military deployment to stop the destruction of oil and gas installations in the area, which you are opposed to based on self-interest and greed. The appeal was for the elders of the area to allow the military to deploy to the Niger Delta since there is still time to clean up the mess that you and other elders created.
Your response to that letter, in which you accused me of being vicious, wicked and not a patriotic Nigerian for stating the truth, failed to articulate any possible suggestion that would contain the activities of these misguided children of yours but rather elected to focus on the anticorruption crusade of the current administration.
Even as you continue playing the ostrich over your role in the crisis threatening the stability of the country, things have turned uglier in the space of these three weeks. Your children continue to destroy vital economic infrastructure even as the few that have seen the light openly named you and other leaders in the south as being sponsors of the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA). They did not only mention your name but prominently so.
Given the venom you spewed pre-2015 General Elections about how the country would burn if your godson, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, was not re-elected; your denial of any links with the NDA is laughable. The most positive reaction it drew from Nigerians was to feel vindicated that they have been proven right. It turned out you shouldn’t have bothered distancing yourself from the NDA or denying what the Reformed NDA (RNDA) said about you and other ingrates from the region. The RNDA specifically narrated how the present destabilization plan was hatched, put on hold when Dr Jonathan conceded defeat and again reactivated when corruption investigations and trials were brought against members of that administration of which you were the one that called the shots.
Despite your denial and half-hearted assurances to call your rampaging children to order, they continue to bomb economic infrastructure and have taken implementation of your agreed plan to the its next phase with a threat to declare secession from the Federal Republic of Nigeria by October 1st. This shows it is you who is unpatriotic.
You of all people know the significant of October 1st and we are not talking about Nigeria’s Independence Anniversary. Rather it was the day your godson, Dr Goodluck Jonathan became a spokesperson for terrorists on October 1, 2010 when he stridently refuted responsibility for a bomb attack they carried out in Abuja. His complicity in issues of insecurity is well a known fact. It must also be on record that it was that infamous blast that opened the floodgate of bombing in Nigeria.
Also recall that when a former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo had to hold a meeting with Dr Jonathan in the presence of Pastor Enoch Adeboye and Bishop David Oyedepo to resolve his numerous letters that went unacknowledged by your godson. Chief Obasanjo accused Dr Jonathan based on security report that the then President was training and arming the youths through NIMASA, then headed by Akpobolokemi. What did you ever do about that ugly episode? Nigerians expect that you will use your influence among persons identified as sponsors of NDA to ask Jonathan or either of these highly respected clergymen to tell the world what Jonathan’s answer to Obasanjo was.
You did nothing about the revelation that your youths were being armed and it will be redundant to now urge you to call your children to order in this instance that they want to declare a problem republic because even a brain damaged youth without the benefit of education should know what treason is and its attendant consequences. If the threat of secession is being bolstered by the pre-election cache of weapons, militants that trained as commandos under the pretext of amnesty rehabilitation, and worthless assurances from some foreign powers, then it means yourself, elders and militants of the Niger Delta failed to read up the relevant portions of international laws and conventions that allow nations to defend their territorial integrity when the need arises. So I nonetheless urge you to call your children to order and that is assuming they can still listen to you.
As you would have noticed, the Nigeria Police Force has issued a warning that your boys must not dare the Federal Government by going ahead with the provocative plan. This must tell you that the beat has changed: while there were appeals to allow the military deploy to the Niger Delta to arrest the sabotage of oil and gas installations there would be no need for such protocols should your children proceed with the manic plan. It is one thing to be detonating explosives that security operatives have now confirmed to have been planted in preparations for blowing up the country over Dr Jonathan’s election loss, it is another thing completely to contemplate treason.
A republic must necessarily have a capital and government with officials so there will be no doubt as to who to arrest for treason and where to get them. This is what makes what your children are contemplating seriously different from the cowardly hide and seek of blowing up pipelines. It is also what should give you concerns that once they expose themselves for arrest a next logical step is that the connection of the elders to them would be exposed.
You must advise your colleagues not to risk using a few riffraff as place holders for the declaration of secession so that security agents won’t be able to make connections with the real sponsors of the plan. History will not be kind to the elders if they repeat the folly that gave rise to militancy and militant warlords. Their latest plan risks creating the emergence of a new power bloc peopled by thugs whom you falsely think you are arming to harass the Federal Government. These same weapons being placed in the hands of the youths will soon turn against those that supplied them.
Yourself and fellow Niger Delta elders must now begin to contemplate how to eat that humble pie when October 1st arrives and there is no republic to present to the masses that you brainwashed into being used as tools. You must also worry that the dawning culture of accountability will force the hundreds of thousands of your impoverished people to start asking why they live in squalor and your children and grandchildren live in gilded opulence. This is the real revolution that will occur as opposed to your expectations that the poor will again offer themselves as cannon fodder – sacrificial animals – to preserve the life of entitlement that Niger Delta elders and militant leaders live.
If you find time to call a press conference to address the issues raised in this letter, kindly do well to objectively digest the issues so that your reply does not shot off at a wrong tangent. What is needed from you is to call your children to order. They must stop all attacks, disband all illegal group they have formed and stop thrash talking the rest of the nation. These must happen without anyone expecting goodie bags as happened under the watch of your godson, it distorts the economy and rewards criminals.
In case you have not noticed, fiscal federalism is something that all constituent ethnic nationalities in Nigeria are clamouring for and many of them are doing it without resort to violence. If we allow you get away with what you are asking for then we will be confirming our ethnic nationalities as inferior to yours simply because we do not have oil wealth. We are not.
. Agila, a traditional minister, contributed this piece from Benue State. [myad]