Bawaye

 July 29, 2021 Press Statement   The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) demands a forensic investigation into reports that the United States (US) Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has linked head of IGP Intelligence Response Team, DCP Abba Kyari, to international fraudster, Abbas Ramon, popularly known as Hushpuppi. The revelation of the involvement of Kyari, the head of Nigeria’s intelligence response unit, as a receiver of proceeds of international fraud is worrisome, disturbing and a stain on the integrity of our nation. It is indeed disquieting that the integrity of our nation has fallen so abysmally low under the corrupt and fraud-patronizing President Muhammadu Buhari-led All Progressives Congress (APC) administration, to the extent that the head of its police intelligence unit is being charged in connection with international fraud. Our party demands that the APC administration should not sweep this matter under the carpet given the manifest rapport between Kyari and so...

  There are strong indications that the much-awaited Board of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) will be constituted next month of August. LEADERSHIP findings show that the top job at the NDDC will go to the former APC governorship candidate in Bayelsa State, Chief David Lyon. The Bayelsa-born politician has been penciled down to become the Managing Director of the interventionist Commission. Lyon hails from Southern Ijaw local government area of Bayelsa State. In the same vein, Dr. Bernard Okumagba from Delta State has been tipped for the position of Chairman of the NDDC given the fact that it is the turn of Delta to fill the chairmanship position of the Board. Others on the list as members of the NDDC Board include Chief Osamuyi Graham Igbinidu from Edo State as Executive Director, Projects. Mr. Otobong Ndem from Akwa Ibom is nominated as the Executive Director, Finance and Administration, while Mr. Saturday Uwuilekhue, Mr. Deyanbofa Dimaro, among others are also Board...

  Ondo State Governor, Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, SAN, has hailed the decision of the Supreme Court which upheld his victory at the October 10, 2020 governorship election in the state.  The Supreme Court, in a majority judgment delivered by Justice Emmanuel Agim, four of the seven-member panel dismissed the appeal by Eyitayo Jegede and his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on the grounds that it was incompetent. Governor Akeredolu hailed the court, explaining that from the Tribunal to the Supreme Court, twelve judges have ruled in his favor and three against him.  The Governor particularly thanked the Judiciary for not yielding to any influence, adding that the glory of the election petition success is to God.  He also appreciated his legal team and those of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the APC.  He said: "I have every reason to thank God and appreciate the judiciary for not yielding  to any influence. We can still ...

A Yoruba officer walked up to Mr Oladipo Diya at the height of his 1997 crisis with his boss, Mr Sani Abacha. “Sir, what is happening?” The very senior officer looked away from the colonel and told him there was nothing. “Sir, did you say there is nothing?” The officer asked with a tone of rhetorics and switched to deep structure Yoruba. “Sir, ti owo ko ba se san mo, a a ka l’eri ni” (if you can no longer swing your arms, fold them on your head). The General looked away; the colonel left. That was on December 13, 1997. Nine days later, Diya fell from everything called power. He also lost his freedom – and almost his life. It was like a journalist who reportedly asked Mr Abubakar Tafawa Balewa at the Lagos airport what he would do with the political fire raging in the West. The prime minister reportedly looked around and declared: “Ikeja is part of the West and I can’t see any fire burning.” That was less than a month to the January 15, 1966 conflagration which consumed the leader who s...

 Political class and Conspiracy of Silence - Dr.Muiz Banire The security situation in Nigeria has become wholly intractable. What started as an isolated case of insurgency in some parts of Borno State has become a national malaise rapidly expanding and threatening the fragile fabric of the nation called Nigeria. The human losses at present have befuddled our capacity to take records and there is hardly an accurate account of people already consumed by the violence of the men of the gun. Thousands of lives have been snuffed out by Boko Haram bombs and guns in the northeastern parts of the country. Suddenly, the North-West caught the fever of banditry, which is operating in a most deadly fashion, leaving behind sorrow, tears and blood everywhere the unscrupulous young agents of death have chosen to carry out their nefarious businesses. Katsina State, the home state of the President, has not been spared the horrors of banditry, killing and kidnap. The volumes of death, maiming and rap...

  Sylvester Asoya  Richard-Mofe Damijo is one of Nollywood’s glamour boys. In some quarters, he is even regarded as the most relevant actor in Nigeria today.  Those who hold the view, defend their opinion from different fronts. According to them, Mofe-Damijo deserves his prime place in Nigeria’s movie industry for obvious reasons. For some, he has packaged himself the most when compared with his peers in the industry. Others however, point to more concrete realities like his carriage, professionalism, courage and charisma which they insist, are second to none.   But there are other things that paved the path to the actor’s successful acting career and the resounding approvals he receives from different corners of Nigeria and even beyond. RMD, as he is fondly called, continues to attract a lot of attention because he is always, and consciously too, in the limelight for good reasons.  Early in his career, he knew the importance of the media and the value of f...

Unfortunately,  Nigeria is a place where history is never consulted or cared about. Hence anyone can pontificate ad infinitum and expect to be applauded.  Such is the case of Dr. Rueben Abati. Many of us grew up respecting and seeing him as a beacon of what a true Nigerian should be like. Especially, during his Patitos Gang days. He was always espousing patriotic platitudes and very good in dropping poignant thought capsules, deemed essential for optimum national growth. But subsequent events and situations that involved him, outed him as the typical whited sepulchre.  He came down hard on Obi Cubana and the way the young man and his friends buried his mother, in the process, using appropriate words to situate most of  Nigeria's ills  on the activity at Oba. He was in such a hurry to crucify that young man, he either deliberately or ignorantly ascribed an older and  unrelated video of scantily dressed women cavorting in a lucre filled swimming pool as part ...

Jibrin Ibrahim, Deepening Democracy, Daily Trust, 23rd July 2021 Yesterday, I saw a video clip of the Emir of Muri giving Fulani bandits a 30-day ultimatum to stop killing his people, banditry and kidnapping in his Emirate. If they do not stop, he threatened, he will order his people to start killing all Fulani on sight. This is another sign that the security forces are outside the equation. An audio clip has been circulating of a bandit leader called Turji who openly proclaimed that he is indeed a bandit who has killed soldiers on three occasions and his location is known to the security agencies. Rather than come to arrest him for his crimes, the police arrested a soft target, his father, because they are afraid of him. He then threatened the security agencies that he will continue to kidnap more people until his father is released. He kidnapped about 150 people in Shinkafi Local Government area, his father was released and he released the captives (See reports by Abdulaziz Abdulaziz...

  By Azuka Onwuka Last week, Mr Reno Omokri, former social media aide of erstwhile president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, reacted to a 2014 comment the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Mr Nnamdi Kanu, made against Jonathan. In that comment, Kanu accused Jonathan of being weak, and said that his wife, Dame Patience Jonathan, was a stronger character. Someone looking for mischief republished the story as if it was a fresh comment, and many like Reno Omokri fell for it without asking questions. However, the interesting thing was that Omokri did not respond to Kanu. He responded to the entire Igbo ethnic group, saying all kinds of uncomplimentary things about them. This is the way most Nigerians react to things involving an Igbo: they usually leave the culprit and attack the whole Igbo ethnic group. When an Igbo speaks, it is the entire Igbo ethnic group that has spoken, but when a Yoruba, or Hausa or Ijaw or Tiv speaks, people usually respond to the individual involved.  Tha...

  By Sijibomi Ogundele   “Suji my son, you must follow me somewhere, I want to blow your mind and quadruple your vision”.  This was a message I got from my royal father, the Ooni of Ife, HRH Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, the Ojaja II. I had to leave everything I was doing, and make my way to Ibeju lekki Free Trade Zone where Dangote has not only transformed the skyline, but also changed the social and economic value of the location, making it the new Lagos for all industrial and commercial opportunities. It was a tedious experience traveling to a location that should ordinarily take us 40 minutes, but we had to spend 1 hour 30 minutes as a result of the unavoidable traffic on that route. However, I was stunned by the level of development that has unfolded in that area and I must appreciate the Lagos State government for the social and economic revolution of the Lekki Aja zone. I enjoyed the trip which was filled with different interesting scenes, one of such is the sight of ro...

  By Prof. Moses E. Ochonu Published  By Premium Times   July 20, 2021 As an economic historian who edited a well-received book on entrepreneurship in Africa, the introduction to which argues for the recognition of distinct African entrepreneurial traditions and innovations, I find the case of Obi Cubana (Chief Obinna Iyiegbu) quite fascinating. The fascination grows when one looks beyond the visuals coming out of the funeral in Oba and the justifiable moral panic the visuals have provoked. Let me first get a few caveats out of the way. I do not endorse his exhibitionist, and performative wealth, but I do not judge it either. To each their own. We all operate from different value and ethical scripts, but none is, in the final analysis, inherently superior to the other. In this piece, I am not concerned with the moral and ethical ramifications of the optics on display in Chief Iyiegbu’s mother’s funeral. Morality is in the zone of the personal, and there is no single ...

  Femi Mimiko, mni I read the press statement put out by DSS on its early  morning invasion of Sunday Igboho's abode, and couldn't stop wondering what was happening! How could a surprise armed attack by an agency of the State, on a man's premises, and without a search warrant, constitute the appropriate response to his rascality? How many hideouts of bandits and sundry highly disruptive elements wreaking havoc and making a boast of slaughtering soldiers has the DSS stormed in similar manner? Aren't we aware that some State governments sit at negotiating tables with unrepentant killer herdsmen? Didn't we read about one governor who gave the impression he had to pay some murderers to persuade them to stop killing innocent citizens in his State?  By the way, aren't we aware that it was the widespread frustration with the lackadaisical attitude of the police to reports of murder, kidnapping, rape, and wanton violation of regular peoples in the Southwest that threw u...

  The Nigerian Televangelist, Revivalist and Founder of Remnants Christian Network, Apostle Arome Osayi has revealed his reaction when God told him to resign from his lucrative job at the NNPC. Here is what Apostle Arome Osayi said in the video: "Only a mad man will labored in the Oil Industry and when he is to pass into management level, he resign. I was going to Lokoja for a crusade. So, I fasted for three days in Benue Hotel and God didn't say anything to me. I was depressed and left for the crusade. On the road God said to me, "When will your passport expire? I said, "28 of September, 2020" and He said, "Your job has expired that day," and I said, "What? I bind you! We are in 2021, yet my job expired last year." As at then, there was only two weeks left for me to write the exam that will qualify me to be a management staff and I don't fail exams, and that's not boasting but I don't just fail. So, when God told me to resign I i...

  Ondo State Governor, Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, SAN, on Wednesday declared that he will never depart the path of righteousness and justice as he advances in age.  The Governor, who disclosed that he has always kept the path of Justice, vowed to continue to wax stronger on it.  Governor Akeredolu spoke during a Holy Communion Service to mark his 65th birthday at the Chapel of the Epiphany located at the Governor’s residence, GRA, Owo.  Arakunrin Akeredolu, who testified to the unfailing love of God upon his life, said the Almighty has continually demonstrated his kindness towards him. The  Holy Communion Service hosted by the Diocese of Owo, Anglican Communion, was attended by Governor Akeredolu’s family members, friends and political and professional associates within and outside government. In his sermon, the Bishop of the Diocese, Rt. Revd. (Dr) Stephen Fagbemi who noted that Owo Diocese was happy to have Arakunrin Akeredolu as its Chancellor judging b...