VOL. 10. NO.021 N100Saturday, March 14, 2015

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Front Page Comment

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•A cross section of APC supporters in Osu, Atakunmosa-West Local Government Council Area of the State of Osun last Tuesday. INSET: State of Osun Governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola (2nd right), addressing APC supporters while with him are; former All Progressives Congress (APC) Chairman in the state, Elder Lowo Adebiyi (left); State APC Secretary, Honourable Razak Salensile (right) and Prince Wale Adedoyin (at the back of Aregbesola).

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J o n a t h a n W o o s O s u n M o n a r c h s , O p i n i o n Moulders W i t h N750m

Presidential Election:

•Choice Cars To Follow SoonOSSIEC Presents New LG Referendum Report To

PDP Will Suffer Defeat At Appeal Court Card Readers: Court Refuses Application To Stop INECWhy President Jonathan Shunned Ataoja During His Last Visit

APC Expresses Concern Over Fani-Kayode’s Mental State

My First 100 Days Covenant To NigeriansG e n e r a l M o h a m m a d u B u h a r i , a P c P r e s i d e n t i a l c a n d i d a t e h a s a n n o u n c e d t o Nigerians what he will strive to achieve in his first 100 days as President and c o m m a n d e r- I n -chief of Nigeria’s

c o r r u p t i o n a n d Governance I pledge to:

Publicly declare my assets and liabilities

E n c o u r a g e a l l m y appointees to publicly declare their assets and liabilities as a pre-condition for appointment.

All political appointees will only earn the salaries and allowances determined by the

Revenue Mobilization and F i s ca l A l loca t i on Commission (RMFAC).Personal leadership i n t h e w a r a g a i n s t corruption

Inaugurate the National Council on Procurement a s s t i pu l a t ed i n t he Procurement Act. The Federal Executive Council,

session of contract bazaar, will concentrate on its principal function of policy making.

Review and implement audit recommendations by Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency I n i t i a t i v e i n c l u d i n g those on remittances and remediation.

Work with the National A s s e m b l y t o w a r d s t h e immediate enactment of a Whistle Blower Act.

Work with the National Assembly to strengthen ICPC and EFCC by guaranteeing institutional autonomy including financial and prosecutorial independence and security of tenure of officials.

M a k e t h e F i n a n c i a l Intelligence Unit of the EFCC autonomous and operational.

E n c o u r a g e p r o a c t i v e disclosure of information by government institutions in the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act.

Ensure al l MDAs and parastatals regularly comply with their accountability responsibilities to Nigerians through the National Assembly.

Cont. Pg. 10

2OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March 14, 2015 3 News OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March

•Senator Oluremi Tinubu (with mic), addressing APC supporters, With her are APC governorship candidate in Lagos State, Mr Akinwunmi Ambode (right) and other dignitaries during a town hall meeting in Lagos, recently.

News

By kazeeM MOhaMMed

•Deputy Governor, State of Osun, Otunba (Mrs) Grace Titi Laoye-Tomori (left) in a handshake with Dr Niyi Oginni (2nd right) while former state Commissioner for Health, Dr (Mrs) Temitope Ilori (2nd left) and Dr Lasebikan (right) watch during a courtesy visit to the deputy governor by Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) in Osogbo last Wednesday.

Presidential Election: Jonathan Woos Osun Monarchs, Opinion Moulders With N750m SequeL to his support-seeking visit to the State

of Osun last week, President Goodluck Jonathan was reported to have released N750

million to be shared among traditional rulers, opinion moulders and community leaders to compromise them in the state.

According to a reliable source, the President did not release the money to either the Peoples Democractic P a r t y ( P D P ) S t a t e Chairman, Gani Ola-Oluwa or the party’s governorship candidate, Iyiola Omisore, on the ground that he could not trust them.

It was gathered that a prominent t radi t ional ruler in the state, who was supposed to handle the distribution of the money, was also sidelined because he was not also trusted.

The President allegedly released the money two days after his visit to the state through the security officers who were expressly directed to liaise with the General Manager of a Federal Agency who hails from Osun Central Senatorial zone of the state to share it in conjunction with a traditional ruler known to be very close to President Jonathan in Boripe Local Government Council Area of the state.

It was gathered that when the traditional rulers converged at a palace in the state to receive the President, the monarchs were directed to release the i r phone numbers through which they would be contacted to receive their shares of the booty.

Some of the monarchs, it was gathered, were reported to have kicked against the move for the contact person to bring the money to their palaces, with a view to sidelining their chiefs and avoid rampage from their subjects should they have such information.

The source said: “The fear being entertained by some traditional rulers has

shown that the monarchs were only deceiving the

President, because they know he is not popular among the people of the state.”

The money, i t was gathered, is being shared to the traditional rulers and other stakeholders in dollars.

A p a r t f r o m t h e inducement of the monarchs with money, the source further revealed that each of the traditional rulers have been promised a brand new car by the President as their own share of the national cake.

It would be recalled that the President in the past few weeks has been visiting traditional rulers, religious leaders, opinion moulders and community leader across the South-West to get their support for his re-election bid.

Information however revealed that some of the traditional ruler refused to benefit from the political gratification, saying: “Our conscience will not allow us to be purchasable.”

Traditional Authority Can’t Save Jonathan From Losing Election - Diekola By ShINa aBuBakar

a chieftain of the all Progressives congress (aPc) in the State of Osun, alhaji Fatai Oyedele Diekola, has described the regular visit

of President Goodluck Jonathan to traditional rulers in the state as a futile exercise and too late to save him.

According to him, the President has fooled the entire Yoruba nation for four years after voting him into power and now wishes to undo his wrongs in

only six weeks bearing hard currencies across the South-West.

He berated President

Jonathan for putting his destiny in the hands of traditional rulers in the region, when in 2011, the people trooped out en masse to vote for him and also fought his course during his acting days, only to turn against the people after grabbing power.

The party chieftain decr ied Jonathan for desecrating the office of the President of Nigeria by involving in childish acts to win election, wondering why the president would go sitting in the midst of traditional rulers for votes.

He added: “Our people in the South-West are so

sophisticated that no one would dictate to them how to vote or who to vote for in the face of overwhelming realities before them. He needs to go back to the drawing board and re-strategise for the region.

“The Yoruba nation is ready for the election and has taken a decision as to what to do with their vote and it is important to note that moving around with dollars as gift to traditional rulers in the name of winning votes from the region would not yield any fruitful result.

“ T h i s s h o w e d t h e d e s p e r a t i o n o f t h e politicians trying to win peoples’ sympathy by dolling out money instead of doing what they ought to have done while they have the liberty of convincing them to delivering on electoral promises.”

Diekola then charged Nigerians to ensure that they are not distracted by the movement of cash around the country, but rather be focused on ensuring that come March 28, they use their voter cards to enthrone change in the country.

APC Hails INEC On Card Readers, PVCs•Says Party Will Sweep Polls By kehINde ayaNtuNJI

the all Progressives congress (aPc) has congratulated the Independent National electoral commission (INec) on

its decision to use the card readers for the forthcoming general elections.

I n a s t a t e m e n t b y D e l e A l a k e , Director of Strategic Communications of the party’s presidential campaign organisation, the APC said that with INEC’s decision to use the card readers and its insistence on accepting only the Permanent Voter Cards (PVC) for voting, a massive blow has been dealt to the carefully laid out rigging plans of the

ruling party.The party further

disclosed that INEC’s decision has derailed the PDP’s plans to mass ive ly dep loy cloned voter cards on the days of the elections.

Alake therefore, called on all Nigerians to back INEC in what he called its “patriotic decision,” so that the forces of retrogression wil l not sway the

electoral umpire to change its mind.

A l s o , t h e A P C N a t i o n a l Wo m e n L e a d e r , R a m a t u Aliyu, said the party was satisfied by the outcome of the test and still in support of the use of the card readers for the general elections.

“On the March 28 date for the elections we stand. We stand for the use of card readers because they wi l l guarantee one man, one vote,” she said.

R a m a t u i n a statement said the

field report from the party representatives c o n f i r m e d t h e e f f i c i ency o f t he card readers, which according to her, will sanitise the country’s electoral system.

However, the PDP has rejected the use of the card readers, saying it is premature for the system to be used.

A statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, sa id i t had noted series of complaints b y N i g e r i a n s r e g a r d i n g l a p s e s experienced during t h e e x e r c i s e a n d challenged INEC to tell the public the outcome of the testing.

The party claimed that the fall-out of the test had vindicated earlier widespread calls by stakeholders that the card readers should be thoroughly tested to ascertain their workability before the general elections. “The PDP expressed worry over the alleged lapses, which it said included but not limited to non-verification of voters’ f ingerprints , even after authenticating the i r PVCs , s low accreditation process as a result of poor internet server operations in some locations, and apparent inadequate knowledge of the card readers by both INEC officials and voters.”

Osun Speaker Blames FG For Unpaid Salaries

the Speaker, State of Osun house of Assembly, Honourable Najeem Salaam, has blamed the Federal

Government for the unpaid salaries of the state workers within the past few months.

Group Prays For Peace During ElectionsNIGerIaNS have been charged to always allow

peace to dwell in their midst at all times.This advice was given by clerics during the prayer meeting organised by an

Osogbo All Progressives Congress (APC) group known as Jagaban on Saturday, February 28, 2015.

Main points for prayer, which usually comes up every Saturday, included praying for the success of Honourable Akintunde A d e g b o y e , t h e p a r t y candidate representing Osogbo State Constituency in the State of Osun House of Assembly during the April 11, 2015 poll.

Others included, praying f o r p e a c e f u l g e n e r a l elections on March 28 and April 11, intercession for the state governor; Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola and members of the APC throughout the federation and for the smooth and continued existence of Jagaban Group within the progressive fold.

T h e c l e r i c s w h i c h comprised Azeez Oyetunde, Lukman Adewuyi, Taiwo Joshua and Fayemi Fajumo all called on members to be law-abiding and always

play politics in a manner devoid of violence.

“Make prayer and the fear of God a daily part of your living. Above all, as politicians, you should avoid violence and play it according to the game.

“There is nothing that God cannot do but only when we realise that He is God and we seek his face. By so doing, He will give us what we seek.

“We are praying for peace during the elections, for our country and our leaders is a good thing and He will repond to our prayers.”

In separate interviews, the Co-ordinator and Secretary of Jagaban , Comrade

Mumuni Owonikoko, stated that apart from holding the prayer session, the group which was loyal to the progressive ideal was also supporting Isiaka Hassan Babatunde as an aspirant for the Chairmanship position of Osogbo local government under the APC.

He also stated that the group has become a force to be reckoned with in the APC in Osogbo Local Government Council Area to the extent that any rally without them is perceived as incomplete.

By FraNcIS ezedIuNO

•Choice Cars To Follow Soon

T h i s w a s j u s t as he saluted the c ivi l servants in the state for their

understanding over the unpaid salaries.

In a cha t wi th journalists, Salaam

said the non-payment of the salaries of workers was not the making of the state government, but due to the carelessness o f t h e F e d e r a l Government in the management of the nation’s economy.

Salaam recalled that

before the drop in the allocation, the state government had been paying the salaries of the workers by 25th of every month, saying, this was due to the concern of the government for its workers.

He said, the federal

a l loca t ion be ing given to the state now was so meagre that there was nothing the state could do with it, rather than finding a way of solving the problem.

According to him, this is not peculiar to Osun alone, it

i s h a p p e n i n g t o other states of the federation due to carelessness of the Federal Government.

He stressed that, rather than building a strong economy for the country, the Peoples Democratic P a r t y - l e d ( P D P ) Federal Government is building individual e c o n o m y t o t h e detriment of the entire nation.

“ T h e F e d e r a l Government does not care whether people get there salaries or not. They have chosen to pol i t ic i se our economy by diverting the resources meant for the states.

“ R a t h e r t h a n building institutions, t h e F e d e r a l G o v e r n m e n t i s building individuals. It is in Nigeria that the money they should use for development a n d p a y m e n t o f salaries are being used for election purposes and the result of all these is what you see in Osun today.

“Instead of having a strong economy in the country, what we have is having individual economy more buoyant than the country itself.

“This is our trying time and I salute the state workforce for their understanding. I assure them that we will soon get over it and things would be back to normal,” he stressed.

Aregbesola Intensifies Campaigns For Buhari, APC Candidates•Asks Jonathan To Stop Playing Politics With Nigeria’s Ailing Economy

the Governor of the State of Osun, Ogbeni rauf aregbesola, has charged President Goodluck Jonathan not to play politics with the ailing state

of the country’s economy.The governor urged the

Peoples Democratic Party-led (PDP) government to as a matter of urgency nip in the bud the issue of oil theft that has robbed the country of trillions of Naira.

Aregbesola gave this charge in Atakumosa West Local Government Council Area of the state in continuation of All Progressives Congress (APC) campaign to drum up support for all the candidates of the party in the forth-coming general elections.

Aregbesola had earlier taken his campaigns to Orolu and Atakumosa East council areas of.the state telling residents that the only hope left for the masses is to see to the end of the Peoples Democratic Party rule at the Federal Government level.

He held that if the said stolen crude oil is being prevented and blocked by the PDP and the Federal Government, such proceeds amounting to Trillions of Naira can be put to use in the development of rural roads all over Nigeria.

The governor, while addressing the people of Ilaa-jesa, Isaobi, Isotun Osu and Ifewara among other rural settlements in

the council area, said the Yoruba have never benefited anything good under the adminis t ra t ion of the conservative party.

A c c o r d i n g t o t h e governor, “if the barrels of crude oil being alleged to have been stolen daily are blocked and prevented by the PDP-controlled Federal Government, which amounts to N1.7 trillion, proceeds from such act could have provided about 2,000 kilometers of rural roads across the country”.

He admonished the people of the area to query the Federal Government on why the Osogbo-Ilesa and Osu-Ife roads, which began seven years ago, were abandoned.

He said, “Nigerians have never had it this bad in terms of hunger, insecurity, corruption, unemployment among others, the worst of it being the economic recession, which made a dollar to exchange for N230 from N120 inherited b y t h e J o n a t h a n - l e d administration.”

T h e g o v e r n o r a l s o appealed to Christians to use the Lenten period to pray for the desired change the country truly deserves by voting for all the candidates

of the APC in the National Assembly and State House of Assembly elections.

Aregbesola, at the palace of the Asotun of Isotun, Oba Professor Akinola Adeniyi Owosekun 11, a l leged that, “if the wastages the Federal Government is noted for are curtailed, no rural community will not benefit from the proceeds from crude oil being stolen daily.

“God in His mercy granted President Goodluck Jonathan the last four years as an economic independence period, when crude oil was sold at $100 per barrel, but wha t d id the coun t ry

witness; abandoned projects including the Alagbado-Ota bridge, started by Chief Ernest Sonekan ‘ s g o v e r n m e n t , ” t h e governor said.

On the comments of the President during his visit to the state that the country is buoyant and that his government is fulfilling its financial obligations to the state, the governor questioned why Federal Government workers are being owed salaries and allowances.

Aregbesola however noted that his visit to the interland and villages is to

enable him assess and have first hand information about the condition of the people.

Aregbesola told the people that one of the things the PDP wanted to ensure by forcing a postponement of the election was to drain the people out and use the period to empower their weak candidates.

“We only need our people to persevere. Our people are Omoluabi who cannot be bought with ill-gotten wealth. We have remained with the people and that is our commitment.,” he concluded.

By OJO taIwO

4 OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March 14, 2015 5555News News OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March 14,

•(L-R)All Progressives Congress (APC) Taraba State gubernatorial candidate, Senator Aisha Alhassan, with APC Vice Presidential candidate in Nigeria, Professor Yemi Osinbajo during the APC rally in Jalingo last Tuesday.

By FraNcIS ezedIuNO

•Photo of the day. Source; face Book.

By kazeeM MOhaMMed

If you have a story or advert for us, contact 08033927286, 08033880205, 08061197897, 08023191891.

PuBLIc NOtIceThis is to inform

members of the public t h a t O L a N I ya N SeGuN, is the same person as OLaNIyaN SeGuN GaBrIeL. All former documents remain valid. Osun State Polytechnic and general public should take note.

OSSIEC Presents New LG Referendum Report To ParliamentBy kazeeM MOhaMMed

the Osun State Independent electoral commission (OSSIec) has submitted the report of referendum on the creation of

additional local government council areas to the State House of Assembly.

The governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, had presented a bill before the

House, seeking approval fo r the c rea t ion o f additional councils, after

which the parliament directed the OSSIEC to conduct a referendum on the proposed councils.

Presenting the report at the plenary on Tuesday, the OSSIEC Chairman, Otunba Segun Oladitan, said the referendum was conducted in all the 3,010

polling units in all the 30 local government council areas of the state.

Not ing tha t the re was huge turnout of participants during the exercise, he said, out of about 1.3 million regis tered voters in the state, 1.2 of them participated.

According to him, out of the 30 local government council areas in the state, only one council area voted in rejection of the new council in its area.

He a t t r ibu ted the reason for the massive turnout at the referendum to the non-par t i san approach adopted by the commission, saying the exercise was conducted without connecting it to

political parties.In his submission, the

Speaker, Honourable N a j e e m S a l a a m , attributed the decision of the state government to create new councils to its commitment for further development at the grassroots.

He said the referendum had shown the seriousness of both the executive and the legislative arms of government to create addition councils.

Noting that there are other considerations required in the process of creating new councils, he said the Assembly would speed up action on the other processes required to bring development to the grassroots.

I n t h e i r v a r i o u s submissions, Honourables Ipoo la B inuyo ( I f e North), Afolabi Atolagbe (Ifedayo), Wasiu Adebayo (Olorunda) and Ajibola Akinloye (Ola-Oluwa) among others lauded the commission for the peaceful conduct of the exercise.

With the successful conduct of the exercise, they said the House now has confidence that the commission would be able to conduct a free and fair poll at the appropriate time.

Meanwhile, the House later dissolved to the committee of the whole for further consideration of the Livestock Roaming Bill 2015.

Why Jonathan Can’t Get Second Term – Omoworarea member of the National Assembly

representing Osun east Senatorial district, Senator Babajide Omoworare,

has declared that no amount of money spent by President Goodlucck Jonathan could make him win the forthcoming presidential election.

Omoworare, who is the Vice Chairman, Senate Committee on Health, noted that the level of corruption recorded by the administration of President Jonathan is a dent on its image and would affect him in the

forthcoming polls. Featuring on “Political

Platform,” an interactive programme organized by the Osun State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Omoworare stressed that the administration of President Jonathan has the highest level of corruption in the history of the country.

He said: “Jonathan c a n n o t w i n t h e forthcoming presidential election. Even if he spends the whole of Nigeria’s allocation to campaign for the election, he will still lose. Nigerians are determined to vote out Jonathan and this we all know.”

He s t a t ed fu r the r that 2015 is the last opportunity Nigerians have to put an end to charlatans in government, and place them where they are supposed to be.

“It is clear that Jonathan will lose the election, hence, his determination to rig at all cost.”

O m o w o r a r e , w h o stressed the need for the use of card readers during

the general elections, said the device would prevent rigging and other electoral malpractices during the forthcoming polls, adding that there was nothing wrong in the use of card readers.

Drawing comparison

between Jonathan and the presidential candidate of the APC, General Mohammodu Buhari, the federal parliamentarian noted that “Jonathan is a corrupt leader, while Buhari is an upright person, who detests corruption.”

He said, members of the APC in the National Assembly supported the choice of Buhari during the APC presidential primary election based on his zero-tolerance

for corruption, adding that an end will come to corruption in Nigeria as soon as Buhari takes over the helm of power.

Commenting on the recent actions of former Pres iden t Olusegun O b a s a n j o , S e n a t o r Omoworare said: “Even though I am one Nigerian that do not like Obasanjo, I want to believe that the former President is now doing what an elder statesman should do.”

PDP Will Suffer Defeat At Appeal Court - Ex-AG

FO r M e r A t t o r n e y - G e n e r a l a n d commissioner for Justice in the State of Osun, Mr. wale afolabi, has said that the

appeal of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) over the judgement of the State Governorship election Petition tribunal at the court of appeal will be an exercise in futility.

After the judgement of the tribunal headed by Justice Elizabeth Ikpejime, where the incumbent governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, was returned as the winner of the August 9, 2014 governorship election,

PDP has headed to the appellate court, challenging the tribunal verdict.

One of the grounds of the appeal was that the APC did not win the election but connived with INEC to allocate votes that the party did not deserve.

S p e a k i n g w i t h journalists during an interview in Osogbo, the state capital, the former commissioner described the tribunal verdict as thorough, accurate, fair and pronounced stage by stage by the judges

wi thou t f a i r and favour.”

According to him: “The Judges touched all aspects and for over seven and a half hours, tore all the evidence and allegations of the PDP into pieces.”

Afolabi urged the candidate of the PDP in the governorship election, Senator Iyiola Omisore, to stop chasing shadow, saying that his appeal at the court will

not take him anywhere.He also hailed the

judgment of the State Federal High Court that dismissed PDP’s application seeking the withdrawal of APC lawmakers in the state.

The application filed by the state chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party, seeking an order of the court to withdraw the certificates of return earl ier given to the National and State House of Assembly members of Al l Progress ives Congress (APC) members in the state was recently dismissed by the Federal High Court sitting in Osogbo.

The PDP sought , among others, an order of the court, nullifying the April 26, 2011 elections, having been supervised b y t h e r e s p o n d e n t , A m b a s s a d o r R u f u s Akeju, former Resident Electoral Commissioner of the state, contrary to the court order.

It also sought an order of the court directing INEC to conduct another election to the state and National Assembly seats.

It would be recalled that the PDP claimed to have obtained a judgment of the court on March 28, 2011, which restrained Ambassador Akeju, the State Resident Electoral Commissioner, from supervising the election into National and State House of Assembly in Osun.

Justice Babs Kuewumi dismissed the application for lack of jurisdiction, saying the appropriate place to get redress is the Election Petition Tribunal.

However, counsel to the plaintiff, Kehinde Adesiyan, vowed to challenge the judgement at a higher court.

Afolabi however, said, the PDP appeal will fail again, adding that what the PDP was trying to do is to make

By kehINde ayaNtuNJI

Card Readers: Court Refuses Application To Stop INECa Federal high court in abuja has refused

an application filed by four political parties, seeking to restrain the Independent

National electoral commission (INec) from using electronic card readers in the coming general elections.

The parties are Alliance for Democracy (AD), United Democratic Party (UDP), Allied Congress

Party of Nigeria (ACPN) and Action Alliance (AA).

The Presidential and

Nat iona l Assembly elections would hold on March 28, while gubernatorial and State Houses of Assembly comes up on April 11.

The parties filed the application through their counsel, Alex Iziyon, and two others.

Iziyon told the court that the plan to use the

card readers contravened provisions of the 1999 C o n s t i t u t i o n a n d Electoral Act.

He contended that the commission lacked the power to introduce card readers at this point, since it was not specifically provided for in the Nigerian laws.

I z i y o n t o l d t h e

court that the National Assembly enacted the Electoral Act to govern the conduct of polls in the country and that while the Act is the head, the INEC is the body of the Nigeria’s electoral process.

He further contended that the body could not be more important than

the head.The senior lawyer also

said that Section 52 (1) of the Act prohibited electronic voting, saying the commission was violating the law by introducing “electronic voter card reader.”

“My lord, this is what brought us to this court,” Iziyon said.

“INEC wants Nigerian v o t e r s t o s u b j e c t themselves to electronic voter card reader, an electronic component, wh ich i s exp re s s ly prohibited.

“Anything to do with e lec t ronic magnet ic capturing propert ies cannot be allowed in the conduct of the election.”

Iziyon asked Justice Adeniyi Ademola to stop INEC from implementing, commencing or directing the use of card readers for the elections, pending the determination of the suit.

He also asked the court to bridge the time within which the commission would file a response in view of the nature of the case which, according to him, had a robust electoral jurisprudence.

While relying on a suit decided in 2003 by a Federal High Court, Ebonyi Division, he argued that the court n u l l i f i e d t h e l o c a l government election conducted in the state b e c a u s e t h e s t a t e Independent Election Commission used the open ballot system in conducting the election, contrary to the provision of the Electoral Act.

Iziyon therefore, said the card reader could not take the place of accreditation recognised by the Act.

Ademola, in his ruling on the exparte motion, said although the case was triable, the four parties, which had legal rights, would not suffer any irreparable harm if the commission was offered the opportunity to be heard before interim orders being sought was granted.

Although the judge refused to make any interim order against INEC on the use of card readers, he abridged the time for the electoral body to file its response.

He abridged the time to four days from the day the commission received the court papers.

Ademola adjourned the matter to March 10 to hear the substantive motion on notice.

Osun Assembly Charges Private Schools On Standard the State of Osun House of Assembly has

urged the owners of private schools operating in the state to improve the standard

of teaching in line with the state government policies on education.

T h e S p e a k e r , Honourable Najeem Salaam, made the call in Osogbo on Monday, when the Assembly r e c e i v e d d e l e g a t e s of the state chapter of National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools (NAPPS).

The Speaker noted that some private schools dropped the standard with which they operate after few years of operation.

H e a d v i s e d t h e proprietors to ensure clean and conducive environment for learning, stressing that teachers must be well-coordinated in dressing and morally, as the pupils learn from them.

According to him, the private school owners have been assisting the government in providing jobs for the people, saying, the association needs encouragement from government to be able to do more.

“It is not everybody that the government can provide jobs for, but you are assisting government

to put food on the table of some of those not captured by government.

“You must ensure that the environment of your schools are neat and ensure that the structure you use to house your

pupils meet the required standard.

“The bus ine s s o f teaching must be done with keen interest, so that the required result could be gotten. That is the notion you must encourage your teachers to have.

“Unlike in the past, the policies of Ogbeni R a u f A r e g b e s o l a ’s

administration in the area of education have increased the enrolment into public schools. This is not meant to debar your progress, but because it is an assignment we must do.”

While calling for the continued support of the association for the state government, he assured that the House would look

into issues on multiple taxation, fees charged for external examinations and other fees that affect the association.

Earlier, the President of NAPPS, Prince Wale Oyeniyi, appealed to the state parliament for reduction of taxes and other fees being paid by private schools owners.

Hausa-Fulani, Igala Communities in Ila Pledge Support For APC

NON-indigenes res id ing in I la Local Government council area of the State of Osun have declared support for the all

Progressives congress (aPc) candidates in the forthcoming general elections in the country.

Leaders of the communities declared their support at a rally organised by t h e p a r t y ’s F e d e r a l Constituency Campaign Committee held at Oke-Ogbun area of Ila-Orangun.

The communities that participated in the rally included Igede, Taraba, Hausa-Fulani, Tiv, Idoma and Iga l a i nd igenes resident in the council area.

Speaking at the rally, leaders of the various groups disclosed that their resolve to support APC was borne-out of the fact that the PDP-led government has shown

that it has run out of ideas capable of making life better for the people.

According to the leaders of the communities, the entire country is yearning for a fresh breadth of air in the coming polls, promising to vote for the APC candidates in all elections.

The leaders agreed that no one would be allowed to sell or give out his PVC among their people, acknowledging that it is their power to participate in the electoral process.

A d d r e s s i n g t h e gathering, the Chairman of the APC campaign committee, Mr Sunday Akere, disclosed that the 2015 general election is an election of liberation from the retrogression the PDP had plunged the country and its people since 1999.

He said the PDP is afraid of the use of Smart Card Readers because it would not allow for the use of cloned cards or purchased cards as long as such cards were not used by their authentic owners.

“As it is now, some politicians have started returning some purchased cards to the owners, having realised that the cards would be useless if they are not with the real owners of

such cards. Even in some areas where the cards were stolen, INEC said it has started recovering such cards,” he added.

In her own view, the former Commissioner for Health in the state, Dr. (Mrs) Temitope Ilori, urged the women folk to continue to show support for the party as they did during the August 9, 2014 governorship poll in the state.

According to her, the untold hardship across the country was a creation of the Federal Government as a strategy of buying people’s conscience during the coming elections and urged the people to remain resolute in the decision to vote the PDP out of power.

By ShINa aBuBakar

6 OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March 5557 OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March 14, News

•The NSE Osogbo Branch Chairman (right) being conferred with the title of ‘Oyangbe’ of NSE Makurdi Branch last week Thursday in Makurdi, Benue State.

By kuNLe OLukOwI

By tOSIN adedOkuN‘Babangida Option’ Will Consume Nigeria – APC Warns PDP

the all Progressives congress (aPc) has warned the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) and President Goodluck Jonathan that, “any

attempt to replicate the infamy of General Ibrahim Babangida’s annulment of the June 12, 1993 election victory of M.K.O Abiola come March 28, 2015 will be the worst crime by any president or political party against the peoples of the African Continent.

“The consequences could be more disastrous than Rwanda and Cote ‘de Voire put together and much more difficult for the combined forces of ECOWAS, the African Union and the United Nations to manage.

“It could consume our faltering democracy, enflame Nigeria and put the lives of millions of people in the country and outside Nigeria at the greatest risk never before known in the African Continent.”

These were the grave warnings contained in a press statement issued by the Directorate of Publicity, Strategy and Research of APC in the State of Osun signed by its director, Barrister Kunle Oyatomi and made available to newsmen in Osogbo, the state capital.

According to the party: “Current events leading up to the rescheduled March 28 presidential election bear such graphically similar hallmarks of the June 12 annulment tragedy, that only those who have PDP sympathies would not see the clear dangers ahead,” the APC claimed.

“The names of the people in the Young Democratic Party (YDP) involved in the current events sound similar to those who got court orders that provided the basis for Babangida to annul June 12, 1993 presidential

election.In 1993, the Association

of Better Nigeria (ABN) was in l eague wi th Babangida’s military government to scuttle the election. Today the YDP is in league with the ruling PDP to scuttle the March 28, 2015 presidential election.

“INEC was ambushed in 1993 and today, landmines are being set for INEC to smash the almost obvious Ppresidential election

result of March 28. It took all of seven years and the deaths of thousands of Nigerians, including both Abacha and M.K.O Abiola before the crisis of 1993 annulment was settled.

“Nobody can tell when a similar crisis in 2015 would end or how many individuals, countries and institutions will lay in ruins by the time the impending calamity is finally brought under control,” the APC warned.

The party believes that INEC must act swiftly by appealing the ruling of the high court in Abuja, which granted the injunctions and prayers sought by YPD that may virtually make March 28, and April 11, 2015 presidential

and general elections impossible.

A c c o r d i n g t o t h e APC, INEC should not only apply for a stay of execution of those injunctions, it must appeal the court ruling for the commission to have a legal basis to proceed with the elections.

“These are some of the lessons that June 12, 1993 annulment should have taught us,” the APC said.

The party therefore called on world leaders, e s pec i a l l y t hos e o f ECOWAS and the African Union, “to do everything in their power to stop the PDP, its allies in the YDP and the pliable hands in the judiciary who are virtually toying with the possibility of an unprecedented

calamity if June 12, 1993 is programmed to repeat itself in any form or shape in 2015.

“I t i s no longer a secret that those who are desperately seeking to scuttle the presidential election of 2015 are the PDP and its allies,” the APC claimed and declared that “President Goodluck Jonathan cannot in good faith claim to be ignorant of this development.”

According to the APC, “Jonathan, the PDP and its allies should pull back from the brink, because this gathering hurricane w i l l s p a r e n o b o d y, including themselves, when it hits landfall in the coming weeks and months.”

Osogbo NSE Boss Attributes Success To God, Aregbesola’s Support

By FraNcIS ezedIuNO

IN further recognition of his contributions to the success story of the administration of Ogbeni rauf aregbesola in terms of

infrastructural developments and improvement in road infrastructure, former Senior Special adviser to the Governor of the State on engineering Matters and chairman of the Osogbo Branch of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, Engineer Felix Ibitoye (Kilomodemo) has been honoured with the Branch chairman’s award and conferred with the traditional title of ‘Oyangbe’ of NSE Makurdi Branch.

The award was part of the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE), Makurdi Branch, First Q u a r t e r l y L e c t u r e , Awards, Dinner and Induction, which held at Empire Suites, Makurdi, Benue State.

Engineer Ibitoye was full of praises to the Makurdi NSE for the recognition accorded him

and promised to do more to promote the goals of the NSE in every capacity.

The Osogbo NSE boss, who was grateful to God, stated that he was grateful to his boss; Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, who being an engineer, had confidence in him and appointed him as his Senior Special Assistant.

“The success I have

attained so far, I attribute to God and my boss. He has a vision for the people of Osun and he brought me into it.

“He did that because he believed in me and my capabilities. My boss also gave me support during my aspiration to become the NSE Osogbo Branch Chairman and I am grateful. So far, I have not disappointed him and fellow professional engineers.”

While describing the NSE Makurdi Branch Chairman, Engineer Imoni Samson, as a brother and friend, Engineer Ibitoye disclosed that he was surprised that such a honour was coming from a state like Benue.

S p e a k i n g e a r l i e r ,

the Soc ie ty’s Vice-pres ident ; Engineer (Mrs.) M. A. Oguntala, who represented the NSE National President, Engineer Ademola Isaac Olo runfemi , i n he r welcome address, charged all the awardees and newly-inducted members to be good ambassadors of the society.

In his address, the Makurdi NSE Branch Chairman, Engineer Imoni Simon, stated tha t the success he had achieved since the inception of his tenure was through the support of his colleagues.

He hinted that the programme was targetted at re-affirming the values built on the dreams of its founding fathers and enacting a benchmark for generations yet unborn.

Osun Traditional Religion Worshipers Get New Executives

tradItIONaL r e l i g i o u s worshippers

under the auspices (trwaSO) have inaugurated new executive to run their affairs for another term of office.

Speaking after the inaugura t ion , the new Pres ident of the association, Oba Olawuni, disclosed his readiness to be commit ted to the dreams and aspirations of the founding fathers of the association and its members.

He pledged on behalf of other executive members to run an open administration that would be all-inclusive, trustworthy and would not betray the aspirations of members that voted him.

The Chairman of the association’s Board of Trustees (BoT), Chief Ifayemi Elebuibon, c o m m e n d e d t h e Government of the State of Osun for providing an enabling e n v i r o n m e n t f o r traditional believers to worship in line with their belief.

He charged the newly-inaugurated executive members to run an administration that the members w o u l d f e e l t h e impact of the group effectively.

Speaking on behalf of the state government, Mr Sunday Akere c o m m e n d e d t h e association for the manner it conducted i t se l f and for i t s constant support for the state government, particularly during the last governorship poll in the state.

He pledged that the association would continue to enjoy government support at any time it so requires.

News

Why President Jonathan Shunned Ataoja During His Last VisitthOuGh, President Goodluck Jonathan

visited the Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade and the Owa Obokun of Ijesaland,

Oba Adekunle Aromolaran, last Saturday, he refused to visit the ataoja of Osogbo, Oba Jimoh Olanipekun.

Though, the President was scheduled to visit the Ataoja’s palace, according to sources, but he later shunned the traditional ruler, as he left Ilesa for his next destination.

H o w e v e r , O S u N deFeNder gathered that President Jonathan deliberately avoided Osogbo for the incessant unwelcome attitude of residents of the state capital.

T h e P r e s i d e n t , according to sources, was always embittered and felt embarrassed when Osogbo residents refused to wave or be cheerful towards him whenever he visits the state.

The president had visited Osogbo twice and

he was not cheerfully welcomed by the residents of the ancient town.

OSuN deFeNder learnt that the President was trying to avoid the same scenario and thus refused to visit Ataoja of Osogbo during his visit to the Ooni of Ife and Owa Obokun of Ijesaland.

A source close to the PDP leadership said: “Anyt ime Pres ident J o n a t h a n c o m e s t o Osogbo, he always feels embarrassed, because people would not hail or wave at him. Only few PDP members would wave and welcome him.

“The President has observed that he is not welcome in Osogbo with the attitude of the residents of the city. So, when he

finished his discussion with Oba Aromolaran in Ilesa, he felt it was not necessary to visit the Ataoja of Osogbo.

“The decision of the President was informed by the feelings of the usual hostile attitude of Osogbo residents to the president. So the President had to avoid embarrassment and refused to come to Osogbo.”

A n o t h e r r e a s o n attributed to the failure of the President to visit the Ataoja of Osogbo was that he had been informed that Osogbo is a strong hold of the All Progressives Congress (APC), according to sources.

The leaders of the Peoples Democrat ic P a r t y ( P D P ) a n d President Jonathan have concluded that no amount o f a p p e a s e m e n t o r politicking could change the minds of Osogbo electorate from voting for and supporting the

APC, it was learnt.“Even if the President

had visited the Ataoja of Osogbo and give him millions of dollars, he will not be able to canvass vo tes fo r Pres iden t J o n a t h a n , b e c a u s e

Osogbo people are for the APC.

“Knowing that fact, it was unnecessary for President Jonathan to invest in where there is no going to be a gain. That was why the president

decided not to visit the Ataoja again,” the source added.

By Our rePOrter

APC Decries Destruction Of Campaign Billboards, Posters By PDP

By ISMaeeL uthMaN

the all Progressives congress (aPc) in Ife Federal Constituency has decried destruction of campaign billboards of its candidates by suspected members

of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ile-Ife during the recent President Goodluck Jonathan’s visit to the Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade.

Chairman of the APC Campaign Committee for the Ife Federal Constituency, Alha j i S ik i ru Ayedun, condemned the destruction of the party’s campaign mater ia ls by the PDP, describing it as high sense of insensibility and political brigandage.

Ayedun, in a telephone in te rv iew wi th OSuN deFeNder on Thursday, accused the PDP of breaching

the peace accord signed by the leadership of the parties for violence-free general elections, adding that the party was not playing politics by the rule.

The former Commissioner for Tourism, Culture and Home Affairs attributed the destruction of the APC billboards by the PDP as a manifestation of the violent campaign of the First Lady of Nigeria, Dame Patient

Jonathan.Ayedun said: “I was not

surprised that our posters and billboards were destroyed and defaced by the PDP after the visit of President Goodluck Jonathan from Enuwa down to Moro Junction. If we had signed a peace accord in Osun, for peaceful coexistence and campaign, it is expected that we the politicians should play by the rules. Out billboards are not to be destroyed.

“But we are not much bothered because we realize that violence and hooliganism are the trademarks of the PDP. I believe that hooliganism could not give a party or candidate vote. Precisely, destruction of our billboards and defacing of our posters could not earn PDP any vote.

“If the PDP thought destruction of the billboards could wash away the interest of the people in the APC, or will take the achievements of Governor Rauf Aregbesola and that of our candidates off the people’s minds, they are just deceiving themselves. We know that the people of Osun know who is actually for them.

“If you want the vote of the people, does it mean that the people must be banished to their homes anytime you are campaigning in their constituency, they should be afraid of you? You need people’s vote and your followers are campaigning with cutlasses and guns to fight the people whose votes you are seeking. That is insanity. The PDP needs to call its people to order.

“Anyway, it is not strange to me because if the First Lady of Nigeria, Dame Patient Jonathan, could say anybody that says change, the slogan of the APC, should be stoned, what else do you expect from ordinary members of the PDP. That means that the PDP people are meant to be violent.

“We in APC are not violent, and we don’t believe in violence. What we are going to do is to replace all the billboards that have been destroyed. We will tell them we are for peace always. We have been enjoying peace in Osun and we don’t want anybody to disrupt the peace.

“The security agents need to call the PDP to order. If the PDP believes that it is through violence that they could get the vote of the people of Osun, they have failed, and the security agencies need to call them to order.”

Aregbesola Charges Broadcast Outfits On Deepening Democracy

GOVerNOr of the State of Osun, Ogbeni rauf aregbesola, has charged media practitioners to make professionalism their

watchword in a bid to make Nigeria’s democracy evolve positively.

The governor, who was represented by his deputy, Otunba (Mrs) Grace Laoye-Tomori, disclosed this while addressing Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria (BON) South-West zone at a meeting held in Ede in the state last Monday.

A c c o r d i n g t o t h e governor, some broadcast outfits have erred in their professional calling by colluding with politicians to spread hate messages capab l e o f i nc i t i ng

violence in the country, saying media ought to promote issue-based campaigns.

He said the country cannot afford to fail its citizen through unguarded comments by politicians, saying the whole of Africa is looking up to the country to nourish democratic institutions rather than attempting to subdue them.

T h e g o v e r n o r disclosed that the 2015 general elections would be a watershed in the

history of the country, hence , the need for the various broadcast outfits to enhance their enlightenment messages on the need for voters to participate in the process.

Governor Aregbesola wondered why section of politicians would want to shy away from the use of Smart Card Readers (SCRs) which INEC intends to use to ensure free, fair and credible polls in this age of technology.

H e u r g e d m e d i a organisations to show the electorate the advantage of the device and stressed the need for its use in the 2015 general polls, saying the media owe the people a duty to that effect.

Speaking earlier, BON

Chairman for the zone, Alhaji Ayinde Soaga, agreed that media outfits have erred in the build-up to the polls, saying one of the purposes of the gathering was to seek a way forward and ensure that broadcast outfits played their professional roles in election coverage.

He stated that the zone is taking the bull by the horns to set standard for other zones on the need to embrace professionalism p a r t i c u l a r l y d u r i n g e l e c t i o n c o v e r a g e , being the region where broadcasting took its roots.

Soaga added that other issues for discussion include the issue of

government equipping its broadcast outfits with digital facilities ahead of the switch to digital broadcast, ensuringe that the opposition had access to public media outfits to ensure balanced and fair reportage of events.

Earlier in his goodwill message, the Osun State Broadcasting Corporation Chairman, Mr Kola Akanji, commended broadcast outfits for the good job they have been doing since the inception of the Fourth Republic.

He said, the gathering is holding at the right time, urging Chief Executive officers at the gathering to make amends where necessary to curb the spread of hate messages on their airwaves and e n s u r e a d h e r e n c e t o professionalism in the discharge of their duties at all times.

By ShINa aBuBakar

•All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Candidate in Nigeria, General Muhammadu Buhari (2nd left) and other APC chieftains when Buhari arrived from London to Nigeria last penultimate friday after a meeting with uK officials at Chattam House, London, recently.

8 OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March 14, 5559News OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March

Maximising Osun/State Of Saxony Anhalt Collaboration There is only one word

to describe the planned collaboration between

the government of the State of Osun and the German State of Saxony Anhalt to boost the state’s agriculture: heart-warming. Undoubtedly, it is an attestation to the fact that the painstaking work undertaken by the rauf Aregbesola-led administration to attract not just investment, but expertise in critical areas of the state’s developmental needs, is finally bearing fruits. Viewed within the context of its declared commitment to improve agricultural practices and to boost food security, it is an important signal that the administration’s avowed mission to banish poverty from the state is well on course.

Of course, it goes without saying that the state needs all the help it can get at this time to be able to optimise its potentials be it in agriculture, solid minerals or even in tourism. As an ideas-driven

administration, the present administration in the state has never left anyone in doubt about the important role of international agencies and development partners in the state’s development matrix.

We have seen the governor make several shuttles to meet with development partners as part of strategies to catalyse the many well-conceived initiatives to transform the state economy in record time. A good example is the governor’s well-publicised visit to the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan. Indeed, there are presently on-going discussions between the state government and the elite institution on possible areas of cooperation to boost the state agriculture. Another notable example is the visit by the governor to the German State of Saxony Anhalt in May this year.

Both developments find m e a n i n g i n t h e c o n t e x t of the governor’s singular commitment to attracting the

best of technology to the hitherto moribund sector and to further his goal of optimising the state’s potentials.

The visit of the seven-man German expert team to the state is no doubt, an icing on his cake. It deserves to be recognised as the fruit of hard work and persistence for which the state government, most especially the governor, deserves commendation.

No doubt, the visit by the team could not have come at a better time than now when the state government is making frantic efforts to reposition the agricultural sector. To start with, there is a lot that our young farmers can benefit from the experts in modern farm techniques and management skills and ultimately in the area of the much needed transfer of technology. The state cannot wait to see the gains of the collaboration in the emergence of new generation of farmers in Osun –individuals who see farming both as a calling and as a business.

At the macro level, we expect the collaboration to assist in

bridging the knowledge gaps in the state’s agro-business. The collaboration is no doubt, a critical step in the state’s quest to overhaul of the agriculture value chain as a strategy to guarantee sustainability.

Finally, just as the point has been repeatedly made that a major bane of the nation’s development quest is the virtual absence of technical capacity by agencies of government charged with implementing well-meaning policies, we expect the benefits of the collaboration to extend to the area of capacity building for officials charged with policy implementation.

In other words, the support, discipline and commitment by officials are no less critical if the noble intentions behind the collaboration will ever come to fruition.

OSUN DEFENDERPublisher – Moremi Publishing House Ltd.

Managing Editor – Kola Olabisi (0803-392-7286)

Editor – Kayode Agbaje (0803-388-0205)

Lagos Editor – Kola Odepeju (08023191891) Production Editor – Pet-Kola Taiwo Ibitowa Senior Reporter – Sola JacobsSenior Reporter – Kazeem Mohammed

Magazine Editor – Niyi Olasinde

Reporter – Kehinde AyantunjiReporter – Francis Chukwuma

Photographer – Oluwagbemiga AdeniyiPhotographer – Olushola Aderinto

Admin. Manager – Murtala Agboola

Computer Operator – Saheed AfolabiComputer Operator – Mary AkintolaAssistant Computer Operator – Lukman Oseni OSUN DEFENDER is published by Moremi Publishing House Limited, Promise Point Building, Opposite Guarantee Trust Bank GTB, Gbongan Road, Osogbo, State of Osun.All correspondence to the above mail address.ISSN: 0794-8050Telephone: 0803-392-7286, 08033880205Website: www.osundefender.com/index.phpe-mail: osundefender@yahoo.com

Cartoon APC Expresses Concern Over Fani-Kayode’s Mental State

the all Progressives congress (aPc) has said contrary to the information being peddled by the spokesman of

the President Goodluck Jonathan cam-paign Organization, Femi Fani-Kayode, the party did not wish him any ill health, even though it was seriously concerned about his mental state.

By kazeeM MOhaMMed

Oyintiloye Cautions Christian Leaders Over Financial Inducementthe all Progressives congress (aPc)

House of Assembly candidate in Obokun State Constituency, Olatunbosun

Oyintiloye, has cautioned religious leaders against financial inducement by those he described as rejected politicians.

He said because of the desperation to either to retain power at the centre or occupy political position at the state level, those p o l i t i c i a n s h a v e been moving around to induce religious leaders with money, with a view to dragging their names in the mud.

Oyintiloye spoke at the 40th Annual Synod o f t he Me thod i s t C h u r c h N i g e r i a , Diocese of Ilesa, Otan-Ile Circuit, in Obokun Local Government Council Area of the

state.The APC candidate,

who cited the alleged bribery of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) leadership with N7 billion by President Goodluck Jona than and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), said the issue has subjected the body to international embarrassment that would be difficult to redeem.

O y i n t i l o y e speci f ica l ly urged Christian leaders to r ise above earthly

encumbrances and pursue their divine mandate in the spirit of Calvary, urging them to avoid the pollution in the world, which, he described as gain of Balaam and pathway of Gehazi.

Describing Christians as the light and salt of the world, he pointed out that those who defile the holy are also not seen as innocent before the Lord, as there are consequences and divine retribution for any act of omission or commission.

“Several names of Christian leaders have been dragged in the mud and we should find ways of correcting these anomalies, rather than dragging more names to the mud.

“By turning the altar to campaign ground after inducement by the PDP, some church leaders are now battling with credibility crisis,” he said.

Calling on religious leaders not to succumb to religious sentiment being whipped up by some politicians, he said such sentiment could a ffec t the i r choices of electing credible leaders that would better the lots of the country.

Oyintiloye however commended God’s Generals who stick to divine mandate and refused to sell their God-given spiritual mandate for a pot of porridge.

Earlier in his address, the Archbishop of Ilesa Diocese, Most Reverend Char l e s

Oderinde, appealed to President Jonathan to be sincere with the sanctity of May 29 as the terminal

date of his term in office.

H e s a i d t h e I n d e p e n d e n t National Electoral Commission (INEC), as an independent body, should be allowed to make its own decision without interference from government, with a view to ensuring free, fair, credible and non-violent elections.

On the abducted Chibok school girls, the clergyman appealed to the Federal Government to expedite action and be sincere with the efforts to ensure their safe return.

•The governor, State of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola (2nd right); his deputy, Otunba (Mrs) Grace Titi Laoye-Tomori ( 3rd left); the outgoing Managing Director of the State Aeronautic Engineering Technical System Limited (AETSL), Air Vice Marshal Andy Tsakri (middle); the newly posted Managing Director of the State Aeronautic Engineering Technical System Limited (AETSL), Air Vice-Marshal Ajibola Jekennu (right); Project Manager of (AETSL), Engineer Aminu Sulaiman (left); Project Director of (AETSL), Barrister Idris Mohammed ( 2nd left) and Project Coordinator of (AETSL), Commander Abdu-llahi (3rd left) during the familiarization visit to the governor at Goverent House, Osogbo, State of Osun, recently.

In a statement is-sued in Dubai on Monday by its Na-tional Publicity Sec-retary, Alhaji Lai Mo-hammed, the party said: “No, we have never and will never wish anyone any ill health.

“However, we are seriously concerned that Mr. Fani-Kayode may have unhinged, perhaps as a result of a relapse into an unhealthy lifestyle of substance abuse.

“Our concern stems from the series of in-coherent statements, outlandish claims and inconsistent behav-iours exhibited by Mr. Fani-Kayode in recent times, which call into question his state of mental health.

“We wish Mr. Fani-Kayode well and call

on him to tell Nige-rians that he remains

clean, despite the massive pressure of work, and that he will not do anything that will see him needing a prolonged refor-mation in a foreign land,” the statement added.

The APC said it was only an unstable mind

and someone who was teetering on the brink that would conjure up the kind of improb-able scenarios that had been put out there in quick succession by Fani-Kayode and still believed strongly that he had done the right thing.

The party said the APC does not har-bour the kind of dis-turbed personalities who abound in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who would not hesitate to publicly wish fel-low Nigerians ill or dead, as long as they

believed such ill-will would endear them to their masters and guarantee their politi-cal survival.

This, the party said was typical of the make-up of Femi Fani Kayode and as such was common traits amongst PDP mem-

10 OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March 55511for the records for the records OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March 14,

My First 100 Days Covenant To Nigerians Cont. Pg. 1

All political officer holdersearn only the salaries and emoluments determined and approved by the Revenue Mobilization and Fiscal Commission RMFAC.

Work with the leadership of the National Assembly and the Judiciary to cut down the cost of governance.

I will present a National Anti corruption Strategy.

Insurgency and Insecurity

I have had the rare privilege of serving my country in the military in various capacities and rose to become a Major General and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. I defended the territorial integrity of our nation.

I pledge to:As Commander-in-Chief, lead

from the front and not behind in the comfort and security of Aso Rock to boost the morale of fighting forces and the generality of all Nigerians.

Give especial attention to the welfare of our armed forces and their families; lost heroes and their families and the victims of insurgency.

Boost the morale of the men and women in the field by public recognition of their efforts through memorabilia, stamps, statues, regular rotation, regular payment of allowances, regular communication between the men and officers of security agencies, provision of best health care and housing for families of deceased comrades.

I will present a marshal plan to the nation that will combat insurgency, ethnic and religious violence, kidnapping and rural banditry.

P r o v i d e o f t h e b e s t a n d appropriate military and other materials the country needs to combat insurgency, ethnic and religious violence, kidnapping and rural banditry.

Establish personal relationship with governors of the affected states by insurgency, with leaders of the countries in the region and with leaders around the world to coordinate efforts to combat insurgency, oil theft, piracy and criminality.

Restore confidence in the bilateral and multilateral partnerships in addressing insurgency including procurements.

Activate regular meetings of the National Police Council to ensure the discharge of its true constitutional role in a transparent and accountable way.

As a father, I feel the pain of the victims of insurgency, kidnapping and violence whether they are the widows and orphans of military,

paramilitary, civilians and parents or the Chibok school girls. My government shall act decisively on any actionable intelligence to #BringBackOurGirls.

Niger deltaI pledge to:Restore the integrity of the

Niger Delta by implementing relevant sections of the Ledum Technical Committee on human capital development, resource management and distribution, governance and rule of law, reclamation and environmental and sustainable development.

Commi t myse l f and my administration to the phased i m p l e m e n t a t i o n o f t h e United Nations Environment P r o g r a m ’ s ( U N E P ) recommendations on Ogoniland.

Unveil a marshal plan for the regenerative development of the Niger Delta.

DiversityDiversity refers to the inherent

complexities of the variations in the social fabric of a people. Elements of poorly managed diversities include absence of cohesion, low capacity or political will to address resulting tensions, weak institutions of the state, in-

equalities in every facet, impunity, breakdown of mutual trust, rising incidences of violence and total breakdown of law and order. To quickly reverse this observable trend in our society:

I pledge to:Continually acknowledge and

consciously equality and equity in all government businesses and activities.

Implement the Na t iona l Gender Policy including 35% of appointive positions for women.

Work with National Assembly to pass a National Disability Bill, which I shall immediately assent, into Law.

Immediately charge relevant MDAs to implement new building codes to ensure that people with disability have easier access.

I will lead the campaign for restoration of mutual trust and cohesion for nation building, while also working with the National Assembly to make appropriation to strengthen institutions and platforms promoting dialogue and inclusion.

I will promote amendment to the provisions of section 14:3 of the Constitution to give effect to the expansion of the scope of representation to include women

and persons with disabilities.Work with National Assembly

to pass the National Disability Act and the Equal Opportunities Bill.

healthI pledge to:Implement the National Health

Act 2014,which guarantees financial sustainability to the health sector and minimum basic health care for all and ban medical tourism by government officials.

Launch special programme to improve availability of water and sanitation.

Review occupational health laws and immediately commence enforcement of the provisions to reduce hazards in the work place.

Unveil a health sector review policy to ensure the efficient and effective management of our health systems.

Mobilize the health workforce needed fo r t he a l l - round implementation of our primary health programmes for rural communities.

agricultureI pledge to:Make pronouncement to make

agriculture a major focus of the government and lay the insti tutional foundation to attract large-scale investments and capital into the agricultural infrastructural sector

Launch a massive agricultural infrastructural investments plan that will focus on production, transportation infrastructure and marketing logistics across Nigeria

Launched a massive, well-coordinated and innovatively funded Youth in Commercial Agribusiness Programme.

Establish agricultural produce pricing and marketing mechanism and institutions

Work with State and Local G o v e r n m e n t s t o l a u n c h Agricultural Support Programmes that will drive state level massive agricultural land development and mechanization agenda

Rev amp , r ev i t a l i z e and continuous improvement on the national agricultural extension and rural support service system

Initiated a holistic project aimed at promoting and securing access of standardized agricultural products to both local and international markets

Lay the groundwork for a standardized market uptake and aggregation outlets for specific agricultural produce

Initiated a comprehensive revamp of key development banks (Bank of Agriculture, Bank of Industry and Nigeria Import & Export Bank) operations to fund inclusive agricultural value chain

operationsLay the groundwork for an

ambitious, massive, seamless, accessible single-digit agricultural value-chain finance programme

In i t i a ted the p rocess to appropriately liberalise and expand agricultural and rural insurance system with premium subventions support to farmers

Revamp the agr icul tura l cooperative system to drive rural agriculture and improves stakes for smallholder farmers

Launch appropriate tariff rectification instrument to support import-export anomalies

Management of the Economy for prosperity

Every Nigerian deserves to benefit from the running of our collective resources. We promise not to leave any Nigerian behind in our determination to create, expand and ensure equitable and effective allocation of economic opportunities. No matter the amount of funds we generate, unless there is an efficient and effective utilization, it will only create few billionaires. Unless we fight corruption, the economy will only benefit the greedy in our society.

I pledge to:Work with the legislature

to strengthen constitutional provisions to make the meetings of the National Economic Council more periodic and predictable and its decisions more binding.

Present annual report on the state of the economy to the National Assembly and the Nigerian People.

The Preparation of Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and annual Budget will be guided by job creation projections.

Negotiate rule-based oil revenue management process, and adopt a rule based excess crude account management process, which will entail a fixed percentage (e.g. 10% or 20%) of oil revenue each year, and also set clear rules about where the proceeds will be domiciled, when the savings can be used, by whom, and what the savings can be used for.

Work wi th the Nat iona l Assembly to adopt a rule based, realistic and predictable oil benchmark as a basis for a more transparent management of federation account revenue and excess crude account.

Launch a Small Business Loan Guarantee Scheme in partnership with Commercial Lenders to improve access to finance for SMEs.

A u t o m a t e t h e b u s i n e s s registration process to ensure sole proprietorships can be opened

within 24 hours and incorporated business within 5 days.

Reduce the cost of company registration to a maximum of N10, 000 for sole proprietorships to encourage formalization.

Review and regulate import duty waivers to promote transparency and accountability;

Forge partnerships with state and local governments and private sectors to promote innovation, entrepreneurship and cottage industries;

Work wi th the Nat iona l Assembly to review and finalize work on the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB);

Boost community and local participation in downstream through expansion and promotion of local content development;

Commence organizational reforms to curb corruption in NNPC and its subsidiaries

Industrial Relations

I pledge to:Give political force to collective

bargaining in all sectors of the economy, revive Triparti te Committee of Government, e m p l o y e r s a n d w o r k e r s organisations, whose task would be to constantly review matters of labour relations and the practice of industrial relations.

Undertake to institute an

annual statutory tripartite body contribute towards formulation and implementation of broad macro-economic policies.

R e p o s i t i o n M i n i s t r y o f Employment , Labour and Productivity and all relevant agencies mandated to manage labour dispute and grievance handling process to ensure pre-emptive strategies to halt the current frequent incessant strikes phenomenon.

PowerThe power sector has become

a monstrous demonstration of corruption. Despite investment of more than X there is nothing to show but few fat cats.

I pledge to:War against corruption in the

power sectorTackle the i s sue of gas

availability for the proposed power plants

Emphasis alternative sources of power such as small, medium and large hydro plants (Mambilla has capacity for 4,700 megawatts), wind, coal and solar. Efforts will be geared towards smaller and potable power supply.

Start an accelerated training of human resources for the power sector.

Work with PenCom to consider

giving soft loans to power sector operators.

youth and Ict developmentThe youth are the salt of the

nation. More than 60% of our population is categorized as being of youth age. The future of the nation depends on the brains of the youth and not on what is buried under the ground.

I pledge to:Declare suppor t fo r the

appointment of young people with requisite qualification into key political offices to begin the incubation and mentoring for a successor political generation.

Unveil a policy that all federal contractors must employ at least 50% young people.

Work with the private sector to establish innovation fund for young people.

Encourage that girls’ and boys’ education is prioritized in states where this is established to be a big problem.

R e v i e w a n d m a k e pronouncements, with attendant political will and commitment, on the full implementation of the national youth policy.

Establish innovation centres in conjunction with proposed National Science Foundation and the private sector.

Include vocational skills in the curriculum of Almajiri schools so that they become self-employed.

Unveil a policy that will begin to multiply the efforts and effects of technology incubation centers to at least establish two of such centres in each of the geopolitical zone.

Establish a free-tuition and scholarship scheme for pupils who have shown exceptional aptitude in science subjects at O/Levels to study ICT-related courses.

Immediately establish linkages with friendly names to champion exchange programmes for the acquisition of IT related skills.

Extend the local content policies to cover software and hardware developments in the youth-driven markets. Put in place a quality assurance mechanism to ensure that standards are met and adhered to and make it a policy for companies to procure a % of their ICT needs from the local market.

Hold a summit of all ICT service providers, OEMs, etc both local and foreign that are doing business in Nigeria to device concrete skills transfer and capacity building models in

My First 100 Days Covenant To Nigerians

•BuHARI•BuHARI

12 OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March 14, 55513phototalk phototalk OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March

All Progressives Congress (APC) Rally At Atakunmosa-West Local Government Area Of The State Of Osun Last Tuesday.

•Lagos State governor, Mr Babatunde fashola (SAN) (2nd right); APC governorship candidate in Lagos State, Mr Akinwunmi Ambode (3rd right); His running mate, Dr Oluranti Adebule (2nd left) former Lagos State deputy governor, Chief femi Pedro (left) and Alhaji Tajudeen Olanusi, an APC leader in Lagos during the rally.

•A cross section of APC supporters at the rally.

•Mammoth crowd during the rally.

All Progressives Congress (APC) Governorship Rally At Eti-Osa In Lagos Last Tuesday.

•Mammoth crowd during the rally.

•A cross section of public school pupils and their teachers hailing Governor Rauf Aregbesola on the occasion.

•Some of Aregbesola’s supporters.

14 OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March 55515 feature OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March

•A cross section of All Progressives Congress (APC) lawyers jubilating at the court room after the declaration of Governor Rauf Aregbesola as the winner of August 9, 2014 governorship election in the State of Osun at the Election Petition Tribunal that sat at High Court, Osogbo, recently.

How The Tribunal Made Non-sense Of Omisore’s Petition (15)

OLa-OLuwa LOcaL GOVerNMeNt.

I n O l a - O l u w a L o c a l Government, there are 10 wards and 52 polling units. The Petitioners’ allegations are in respect of 22 polling units in the 10 wards - They are :- (1) Telemu ward 1, polling units 003, and 004. Ogbaagba II ward 04, polling unit 001. Ikire Ile/Iwora ward 5 polling units 001 and 002. Isero/Ikonifin ward 06 polling units 004, 005 and 006. Obamoro/Ile Ogo ward 07, polling unit 005. Bode - Osi ward 08 polling unit 002, 004 and 005. Ajagba/Iwooke ward 09 polling units 001 and 003. Asa Ajagunlase ward 010, polling units 003 and 008.

In proof of the various a l l ega t ions o f e lec to ra l malpractices in their pleadings in pages 133 to 135 of the petition, the Petitioners called only one witness, PW37, who was a ward supervisor in respect of Telemu ward 001.

The Petitioners’ complaints range from non stamping of formsEC 8A used in certain units; particularly unit 001 in ward 02, unit 001 in ward 04 and unit 001 in ward 005.

They also complained of alterations in ward 06 unit 004, that form EC 8A used in this ward has alterations not counter signed by the appropriate officer. Same complaints in respect of unit 002 ward 08, and unit 001 and 003 in ward 09.

Much as these complaints are serious which can alter the results of elections, they must be substantiated by convincing and credible evidence by the party alleging or asserting.

As we have observed earlier on, the PW37 was fielded by the Petit ioner and he adopted his statement under oath as his evidence in this petition. However under cross-examination by the learned counsel to the 1st Respondent, the PW37 admitted that his complaints relate only to ward 1 unit 003 CDC Primary School Telemu 1. He confirmed the result in form EC 8B and also confirmed his signature in Exhibit 176. The PW37 who said he personally visited the 6 units in his ward maintained that he personally witnessed all the irregularities perpetrated by

the Respondents. However, it is clear from

Exhibits 201, and 172 that he signed the results. He also failed to show before the Tribunal any result sheet without the official stamp of the officials

By IBrahIM LawaL

•AREGBESOLA •OMISORE

who conducted the election, neither did he show any altered entry not initialed or counter-signed. Irreconcilable entries as alleged in the pleadings and the witness deposition were not also proved.

Apart from all the above,

the Petitioners did not call witnesses in respect of the other units. It means they are abandoned. From all we have said, it is obvious that the various malpractices in the election in Ola-Oluwa were not proved.

‘Our Dear First Lady’YOUR Excellency please let me start

by emphasising the fact that this is my very first letter to you since

destiny elevated you and your husband to the highest positions in Nigeria. It may be the last before your tenure expires on May 29, 2015, and another begins with you or someone else in the saddle. Despite all the controversies engulfing you and your husband, I had resisted the temptation of writing you in the past for several, if not many, reasons. Kindly permit me to expatiate a bit.I’m a great admirer of strong, confident and energetic women who cannot be bullied by the galaxy of male chauvinists that litter the political landscape of Africa. As someone who was brought up by my amazing mum, Omo Arotiwebiojo, an unlettered woman and petty trader, I knew what it took to survive in a particularly difficult terrain. Indeed, whilst some have impugned you for your so-called lack of command of the English language, I have remained partial to you because, like most of us, English is not your first language, and your contributions have enriched our home-grown lexicon! I can therefore imagine what you and our dear beloved President must have gone through together, in thunder, lightning, rain and sunshine. The hurly-burly of life must have thrown you hither and thither when there was no one else around to share in your secret pain and anguish. But it must have pleased God in His infinite mercy to raise you and your husband up, like Jesus did to a dead Lazarus, as original examples of uncommon transformation.

I must say, Ma, that I have a soft spot for you for other reasons. I was told on good authority that you were a more formidable politician and mobiliser of people and resources than your husband. A few of your friends often regale how you have been a solid pillar and a rock of Gibraltar behind the love of your life, Dr Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan. It is said that you’re willing to sacrifice your all for his sake and he has also reciprocated by according you humongous respect and granting you such vast powers that make onlookers see you as a de facto President in your own right. To God be the glory.

I vividly recollect your relationship with the former First Lady, Hajia Turai Yar’Adua (pictured above). You gave her tremendous respect and your taciturnity was legendary. Not much was heard from you at that time and not many, except probably Bayelsans, ever suspected that you had so much buried inside your heart and that you were only waiting for the opportune time to vomit them. Even in the days of tribulations when the cabal held sway and grabbed our nation by the jugular, you and your husband handled the volatile situation with maturity and remarkable equanimity. Some of us were ready to fight your battle, and risked our lives, because we saw you as the underdogs who must be rescued from the fangs of the political hyenas. We were further emboldened by the facts of your husband’s man-in-the-street story, a fairy-tale of sorts about a man from the Otuoke manger who had no shoes. We were not just titillated but fascinated by such flashes of inspiration.

Against all odds, your husband became the substantive President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria after the demise of President Yar’Adua. Nigerians were happy about the smooth transition of power and they even boasted that for the first time we had not just another graduate but a PhD holder as President. Sooner than later, as time sped by, it was time for your husband to run his own race. Nigerians from all walks of life queued behind him and he won without much ado. The goodwill he garnered was awesomely massive and the people were very expectant about the “fresh air” promised by him. Of course, to whom much is given, much is expected.

It is nearly four years since that momentous occasion and it is time for a re-examination and re-election. But what should have been a simple walk-over for your sweetheart seems to have developed k-leg. While your husband and those close to him would want us to believe

he is Nigeria’s best President ever, many Nigerians feel he has under-performed and would want to try someone else. I have seen you and your husband waka up and down this nation campaigning like no man’s business. Many have likened the exercise to a student engaging in last minute agberu (memorising) after failing to do so all along. This is the crux of my epistle to you today.

I have read and heard so much about you as a very powerful First Lady. I know that when you are at that level, not many people can tell you the gospel truth. No one wants to offend those in power. But I have decided to tell you the bitter reality once and for all. I’m not writing out of any malice, since none can exist between us. But for the sake of posterity, which I know beckons as always; the fact must be told to you. The summary of what I’m about to say is that you and your husband have frittered away most of your goodwill. Had you retained your humility in power, may be you could have avoided this commotion and conundrum of trying to achieve in two months what you couldn’t in about five years. You would probably have avoided the tragedy of trying to manipulate the electoral process, buying more time and doing a catch-up on lost grounds.

If the actuality must be told Ma, the whole trouble started the day you publicly ridiculed the Governor of your home state. It was reported that you yanked a microphone out of his hands and lambasted him like a recalcitrant school boy. In order not to cause mayhem right there, the Governor was said to have left you to your tantrums and went home quietly like a penitent student. That day, you sowed the seed of discord that would later germinate and snowball into a consuming fire. Though the Governor and your husband like true gentlemen chose to carry on their damaged relationship as if all was well, but the worst was on the way.

The battle for the soul and control of your state would later spread to Abuja where your husband began to see the Governor as an enemy who must be cut down to size. In the process of trying to achieve that dream, more Governors joined the fray and in a jiffy, the centre could no longer hold. I do not want to go into some obvious details as I’m sure you know about the intrigues

of power more than me. But I must give one more example of how you laid the foundation for today’s grand alliance against your husband.

Let me put it this way. Never in the history of Nigeria have I read of a First Lady responding to criticisms in the frontal manner you attacked Professor Wole Soyinka over an issue that you could easily have ignored. That singular act of unrestrained combativeness was one of your worst public relations gaffes. Wole Soyinka is one of those global icons that you can’t take on and win. If for nothing, here was a man who at about 76 years of age trekked under the scorching sun of Abuja to defend the rights of your husband when many of the acolytes around you today were nowhere to be found. You were not supposed to repay such selfless gestures with verbal blows. That was when you finally lost me and I’m sure many others.

Let me remind you that virtually all Nigerian leaders have been disparaged at one time or the other. It is one of the heavy prices to pay in compensation for the privileges of leadership. Just imagine how much some of us attacked President Ibrahim Babangida, Chief Ernest Shonekan, General Sani Abacha and others over the June 12 crisis. None of their wives ever hit back at the critics no matter the degree of provocation. In fact, they acted perfectly normal and even tried to build bridges of friendship instead of bombing the castle. I remember with fond memories, Dr (Mrs) Maryam Ndidi Babangida (pictured above), who remained graceful to the very end. Mrs Maryam Abacha endured the most blistering attacks against her husband in life and death. She has since reconciled with many of her husband’s vociferous enemies. Hajia Turai Yar’Adua was subjected to virulent criticism by many, and I confess I was one of her knockers in the dying throes of the cabal, but she wisely kept her own counsel and declined to join issues with anyone.When it dawn on her that the battle was lost and won, she packed her baggage out of Aso Rock without as much as a whimper.

If Justice Fati Abubakar was a selfish woman and a poor adviser to her husband, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, she would have insisted that they should not quit power within the one year he promised to hand over to a democratically-elected President.

That government had more than enough resources to buy the ubiquitous array of mercenaries but General Abubakar chose to go in peace and not in pieces. It was such a rarity in Africa and till this day the General is still enjoying a standing ovation for his vision.

I must also mention specifically Mrs Stella Obasanjo (pictured below), whose husband has always had a running battle with the media and yet she maintained steady media frenzy in her own kingdom. She was everyone’s friend and continues to be fondly remembered even in death. I recollect one occasion when we travelled to Beverley Hills, USA, with her, and her simplicity just wowed everyone. She made sure we jumped in the cars and buses and headed out to a night club owned by Don Cornelius. She was so down to earth. On her last trip to Ghana before her unfortunate death, I had gone to pay her a visit at M-Plaza hotel where she and President Obasanjo stayed. Despite my frosty relationship with her husband, we sat in one corner chatting away as the President attended to his own visitors. She never got involved in our endless battles with Baba. I have cited these examples to show that you and your husband are not alone in the barrage of criticisms and attacks. You must rise up way above such pedestal. But sadly, you have not been able to allow any comment pass you by, no matter how mundane.

I decided to write this open letter after the spate of vocal terror you deployed in the last few days against your husband’s opponents. In case some praise-singers told you lies that what you did was right, I wish to assure you that you’ve done almost irreparable damage to your husband’s presidential campaign. I will now proceed to paraphrase about three of those satanic verses that escaped from your tongue this week alone, but not in any particular order.

The first shocker was when you said before a crowd that those shouting the mantra of Change are not serious and that as a matter of fact they should be stoned anywhere they shout Change! I thought it was a joke until the video went viral. The next one was when you spoke dispassionately about how your husband should be praised and thanked for improving the welfare of the menacing Almajiri kids in Northern Nigeria but you then went astray by insensitively and inconsiderately saying that the Northerners are fond of bearing children with reckless abandon and throwing them on the streets to fend for themselves. You went further to say such things don’t happen in the part of Nigeria you come from. I think that wasn’t very nice or tactful.

The last straw for me was when you declared matter-of-factly that your husband’s main challenger, Major General Muhammadu Buhari should not be voted in because he is “brain dead”, according to you. That was extremely malevolent and sinister, to say the least. It is not an elegant language to be used by any lady not to mention the First Lady and certainly not about a former Head of State of the same country that you are governing and from whose citizens you are seeking a second term in office. However, I believe that this may have been an innocent quip. Whilst some may be willing to forgive such naivety, it is essential for you to quickly assure Nigerians that you meant no harm and that despite the ill-feeling and bitterness that politics and electioneering may engender you wish no evil to any man least of all your husband’s leading rival and contender. There is nothing wrong in admitting your mistake of commission or omission. It is actually a sign of strength.

In conclusion, I think you need to offer urgent apologies for those unguarded, unbecoming statements and try to be more circumspect in the future. One of your best appellations that I love most sincerely is that of Mama Peace. Please, don’t change it to Mama War …!

May God continue to bless you and yours.

•Culled from THIS DAY

By deLe MOMOdu

•PATIENCE JONATHAN

16 OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March 55517for the records OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March for the records

Keynote Address Delivered By Senator Babajide Omoworare At Ijesa People In Diaspora (i-Pid) Annual Conference And Award In Atlanta, Georgia, uSA.

INtrOductION

LET me start by thanking the P r e s i d e n t a n d t h e e n t i r e m e m b e r s

of Ijesa People In Diaspora (I-PID) for the award given to My Governor Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola, whom I am representing tonight and on whose behalf I am receiving his award. I also thank I-PID for also recognizing my modest efforts to bring good governance to Ijesaland, Osun East Senatorial District and to our great nation Nigeria as a whole.

Part of the themes of this event is: “6 Year Development Plan for the Homeland - Vision 2020”. Of particular interest to me is the sub-theme “Governor Aregbesola’s Second Term: Ijesaland, Our People, Our Zone, Our Expectation”. The foregoing theme and sub-theme show a very serious organizational insight. Considered together, both themes dwell on the expectation of Ijesa people during the second coming of Aregbesola. The sub-theme is summarized as follows:

1) Economic Development and Education in Ijesaland and Nigeria;

2) Investing in our Community;3) Empowering our Future

Leaders; and 4) The Role of Education on

Economic Development.I am of the instant view that I-PID

is pro-active. The expectation is such as to de-emphasize accepting handouts from politicians, but rather to see how to develop the community by plugging into the economic developmental plans of the APC State Government of Osun. From the theme and the sub-themes, it is important to note that there is need to synergize economic development, investments, education and create opportunities for the future generation. The foregoing is very important in view of the fact that Nigeria has a population index where almost 70% of us are less than thirty years old and as such, within the enviable productive threshold. 70% of these youths are however unemployed or underemployed. This makes them a thriving factory as political thugs and likelihood or susceptible to fall for “stomach infrastructure” of 5 kilo bag of rice, 4 Litre Kerosene and N10, 000 (or far less) to vote for those who will perpetuate them in poverty and penury.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION IN NIGERIA.

As vital as economic developmental

planning is, it has been lacking in Nigeria. This dearth of planning in the area of economic development is not for lack of trying; we have just stopped matching growth, priority, sincere appropriation, and political will with economic development. Governance is not haphazard, economic planning is purpose driven. If it is the government’s desire to achieve some results and accomplish some aims; the government must

have particular focus at every point in time. Kneejerk approach to planning and execution is bound to meet with failure.

Under the colonial government, Nigeria had several economic plans - 1940, 1946, 1950 and 1959. Between 1960 and 1985, Nigeria had the First, Second, Third and Fourth National Development Plans. A one year emergency economic program was launched in 1986 before the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). Others include a twenty year perspective plan from 1989 to 2008, Vision 2010 and then Vision 20:20:20, National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategies (NEEDS) and State Economic Empowerment and Development Strategies (SEEDS), etc.

Before every budget presentation, the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 requires Mr. President to send to the National Assembly for approval, the Medium Term Economic Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP). However, the executive arm of the federal government’s persistent failure to comply with this constitutional provision has

engendered instability in our economic development in Nigeria. Though democracy is naturally expected to bring some semblance of stability, we have unfortunately not achieved our desired potentials. Otherwise , appropr ia t ion to Ministr ies , Departments and Agencies (MDAs) at the federal level should be allocated on priority basis and not via the wasteful and indiscriminate “envelope” system, which does not comply with the basic rules of fiscal discipline, priority, efficiency and operational efficacy. The share of total expenditure allocated to each sector is a key indicator of spending priorities for a given year and of shifts in priorities over a period of time. Thus, comprehensiveness, predictability, contestability, transparency and periodicity are key ingredients of good budgeting system.

Since I-PID has noticed gaps, not only in the economic sector but also in the educational sector, it is important to address same. Education is the key to every other door in a country and the graduates produced by a nation speaks volume about its educational system. Lately industrial actions by unions like

ASUU, NASU, SSANNU etc. have become more of a norm than an exception. This has left a negative impact on the curricula of our school and quality of our academic output. In the recent biannual Webometric ranking of world Universities, only 12 Nigerian University made the first 100 in Africa with the highest ranking University (Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife) occupies a lowly 19th position in Africa and 1655th in the world; a testimony to how low we sunk in the comity of nations to the point that a lot of our Universities are training graduates that are deemed unemployable. Foreign and private universities are smiling to the banks as desperate Nigerian students throng them for supposed better education. The lecturers are also not left out as they perpetually search for greener pasture offshore. Incidents of cultism and malpractices too have become permanent feature of our educational system.

Due to paucity of funds, what we spend on education is grossly inadequate. Even if the Federal Government commits its entire annual budget of N4.962tn to its 40 universities, this translates to N100bn per university, or about one-half of the budgets of Imperial College, London. Twelve of these universities, if it must be restated, are newly established on virgin lands with virtually zero infrastructures. Lack of priority by successive governments has continually led to rapid decline in allocation to educational sector over time. Despite UNESCO recommendation of 26%, 2014 budget for education (N496bn) was a meager 10.7% of the total national budget. Ironically, that meager allocation is even considered an upgrade on previous federal budgetary allocation.

Education has direct linkage to development. Universities in diaspora serve as sounding board for governmental plans, policies and programs. Professors and other academia are Consultants to governments. Some Treasury Secretaries in USA were not only technocrats; they hold Ph.Ds or Masters in finance, Economics and similar disciplines. Lawrence Summers (Professor of Harvard University) typifies this postulation. This was the position even in Western Region in the first republic under our late sage Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Professor Sam Aluko was Chief Awolowo’s “sparring partner” on the economy. In every human endeavour, the quest for knowledge and its application in the day-to-day affairs of men is sine qua non. Therefore, Nigeria must reposition herself to benefit from the direct linkage between education and development.

STATE OF OSUNThe incumbent and just re-elected

government of the State of Osun did not just start planning after it took office. What Ogbeni Rauf

Aregbesola did was to prepare and plan before contesting for power. Well ahead of the 2007 election, the Governor entered into a Pact with the People of Osun with the much-lauded 6-point agenda. The 6-point integral action plan that formed the focus of the government of Osun are: free and quality education, restoration of basic health system, war against poverty, war against hunger, war against unemployment, modern town planning and urban development. Governance is just like business, you do not go into it blindfolded. You have to develop a business plan, a feasibility report and viability study.

With a Population of over 3.4 million and a burgeoning Civil Service, State of Osun juggles between limited resources and expectant electorates. In the recent past for instance, federal allocation was circa N4.2b while Wage Bill was N2.6b. Declining federal allocation has reversed the situation. Whilst statutory allocation has nosedived to below N2.6b per month, the Wage Bill has risen to about N3.6b. It is important to note that due to blockage of wastages, forestalling leakages and improvising extraordinary financial engineering, the monthly internally generated revenue of the state has risen from about N300m to N1.6b to compliment the shortfall from statutory allocation. It is to the credit the Governor that not one Osun worker has been retrenched on ground of apparent scantiness of funds as is the case in many other states, even with higher statutory allocation.

Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola deploys the Keynesian economic theory, in this context that is, the more jobs he creates, the more disposable income there would be in the economy space of Osun. With the creation of employment and empowerment schemes like O’Yes (a Corp of 20,000 youth volunteers), O’Meal, O’Clean, etc. the economy of State of Osun is growing in gargantuan proportion. Proof of this is the National Bureau of Statistic admission that while federal unemployment now stands at 24% from 8.3% in 1999; Osun has reduced unemployment to 3%. Efforts at poverty reduction among the citizens have also proved to be about the best in Nigeria. There is the initiative to offer interests-free loans to micro, small and medium scale enterprises. To this end, N4b was recently made available to this sector through cooperative societies; and you do not have to know anyone in government to access the credit facility. Osogbo is simply the fastest growing city in Nigeria. In summary, the state government has been the “vertebrae” of small businesses growing the economy of the state.

The various “O’Schemes” are geared towards positively engaging able-bodied Youths and Women, removing them from the streets. Agriculture is also our priority. Irrespective of your social status, agricultural land is made available to whomsoever is interested and the government of Osun bears the cost of

preparing the land, the government sands by you all the way, up to the point of harvesting and marketing. I therefore suggest that apart from the general economic development by way of industrialization, agriculture should be tapped into by I-PID. The state government of Osun has other agricultural schemes like O’Ram, O’Meat, O’Fish, O’Poultry etc. So much can be done. The airport is ongoing; we should start thinking of exporting processed and semi-processed agricultural products.

SUGGESTIONS TO I-PIDSince I-PID has chosen to draw

a parallel between Education and Economic Development, I will generally suggest in the immediate that you encourage the study of Science and Technology - Mathematics, Engineering, Physics, Chemistry etc. This is the way to go now. It is the edge China, India, Russia and Eastern Europeans have over us all. As a sitting Senator, who was contesting as the President of the United States of America, Barrack Obama asserted in his book “The Audacity of Hope” that there is the need to increase the pool of United States’ minority and female mathematics and science students. He had visited Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google in Mountain View, Silicon Valley, a few miles from Stanford University, California. When he was introduced to about 50 (fifty) new recruits

during Google’s TGIF (Thank God It’s Friday) assembly, not one was black or Latino, ”at least half of the group looked Asian; a large percentage of the whites had Eastern European names”. Every year, Google hires top graduates in mathematics, engineering and computer science from MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Berkeley etc., and in its appointment, extremely few are blacks. In fact, high-tech firms have set up operations in India and China. I-PID must design a scheme how our children and wards from Osun would be encouraged to study science and technology and benefit, going forward.

I n o u r l e a d e r s h i p a n d entrepreneurship training of youths, there is a concerted effort to make our youths consider fresh and newer ways of meeting challenges. One of such initiative is the need for them to take the road less travelled by embracing courses that offers them more opportunity to become professional and self-employed. We always encourage students to undertake courses that give an option to either easily get work with an employer or be self-employed. One area that has been largely left untapped is the discipline of Guidance and Counseling. I hope I-PID will also consider ways of mentoring students in this regard.

Governments and politicians

make strident effort to offer bursaries and scholarships to some deserving and indigent undergraduates, including foreign grants for postgraduate students. I-PID could assist State of Osun students with Carnegie Foundation, Fulbright, Ford Foundations etc. to open opportunities for eligible indigenes to network, learn and benefit from the above foreign aids agencies and others too numerous to mention.

To keep the youths and students actively engaged during their holidays, periodic capacity building and educational programs are usually organised. Summer schools, Computer Training for students and teachers, intensive JAMB classes and such other activities are recommended to I-PID with a view to keeping our youths busy. We should also encourage students to participate in debates, quiz and exchange programs abroad.

I-PID must strive to use its connections to assist the State of Osun in the area of Teacher training. It is important to note that whilst the standard of Teacher training is quite high in United States of America, the government of Finland has set the most enviable standard. You cannot even start teaching until and unless you have Masters in Education. Teaching is very lucrative in Finland. The emolument is at par with other professionals like Doctors, Engineers, Pilots, Lawyers etc. The foregoing has made teaching attractive, prestigious and has naturally driven people to indicate interest in the profession. Teachers in Finland have also displayed more dedication and commitment as a mark of appreciation. We have to learn from this experience and improve the lot of our Teachers.

I t i s apparent f rom our natural

endowment that apart from Information and Communication Technology/Management and Sciences, the future is Agriculture. As the world wake up to the reality of world hunger especially in developing economies, food security has become a global theme and Nigeria in general and our state is eminently situated to meet the growing demands for both food and cash crops. Of course, the state government has begun providing the enabling environment by making farming and its allied value chain lucrative and attractive. There is already an agricultural revolution in the State of Osun. The State of Osun waits with open arms, potential investors and entrepreneurs wishing to take advantage of the vast opportunities in the agricultural sector in the state as a whole. I am of the view that I-PID should play an active role in this respect.

CONCLUSIONIn the State of Osun, the Governor and

his team have ensured that the future is open to all, irrespective of your origin, creed or background. Especially in Osun East Senatorial District and Ijesaland in particular, we must in the next 6 years ensure that in seeking to gain admission into tertiary institutions, our youths must change their focus. We must ensure that they acquire leadership and entrepreneurial training; we must look at setting up innovative and industrial hub to enable them ventilate their ideas, give them access to funds/finance and mentor them. Most importantly, we must also leave this conference and not keep to all our resolutions; our resolutions must be on the front burner, we must work on them and see to their fruition.

Once again on behalf of Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola, the Governor of the State of Osun and the good people of my Senatorial District and my State, I say a big thank you for considering us for these Awards. These Awards will definitely motivate us, serve as impetus to do a lot more and we assure you that we will not relent in our efforts to bring succor to our people and advance the good course of human development.

•OMOWORARE

•OMOWORARE

Education Has Linkage To Development Education Has Linkage To Development

18 OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March 14, 2015 55519

health

OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March 14, 2015feature

Job Vacancies In Nigeria

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Latest Jobs in a Leading Nigerian Bank for Graduate Account Support Officers, March 11th 2015

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Jonathan Must Resign, Prostrate For Buhari - Femi Fani-Kayode“Jonathan Must Resign as President

forthwith and Prostrate flat on The floor for Buhari” -femi fani-Kayode

ACCORDING to the Russian psychologist, Ivon Pavlov, there are some things that a dog does not

need to learn. For example, dogs don’t learn to salivate whenever they see food. This reflex is ‘hard wired’ into the dog. Pavlov gained worldwide popularity with his Conditioning Theory, which in layman understanding means that a natural, innate or underlying behaviour that ordinarily would genuinely come to action is conditioned by ‘something’ or circumstance(s), thus making it (the reflex action) to come to play by flawlessly.

Relating the above to the context of behavioural psychology status of the notorious Femi Fani-Kayode (FFK), we can posit a finding that like every man, the psychology of truth-telling is ‘hard wired’ into FFK before the advent of his new world of the ‘Jona-PDP template’. Precisely, this period refers to his days before he made a surprise appearance at the Aso Rock Villa on Tuesday, April 8, 2014 for ‘a meeting’ with President Goodluck Jonathan, hours after threatening to dump APC for what he termed “religious insensitivity” in the party. In essence, FFK never needed to learn to tell all the truth he told about PDP and the Jonathan before April 8 last year. It was innate for him when he described Jonathan as “a President, who does not understand the meaning of the word ‘’class’’ or ‘’honesty’’ and who breaks his own word consistently”.

Two facts are important to be noted at this juncture; remember the Conditioning Theory of Pavlov as explained above. This will subsequently explain the next fact below.

It was rather bizarre as Fani-Kayode suddenly raised a storm, when he threatened a walk-out of APC because of the taunted Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket for the party then. As at then, no political party in Nigeria had staged a single primary to determine the standard bearer in the coming elections. And of course, there were other chieftains of the party who were ‘not at home’ with the Muslim-Muslim ticket proposal then. For their genuineness, they remained in the party, slugging it out until the Buhari/Osinbajo ticket was decided. So it became apparent that the ‘walk away’ of Fani-kayode came within the context of conditioning. Yes. Fani-kayode salivated like the Pavlov’s dog would, seeing his master entering the ‘conditioning laboratory’ of the Aso villa.

The conditioning of Fani-Kayode’s psychology came as President Jonathan ‘dangled’ the charge sheet of the N100 million money laundering charges brought against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). This came when Femi Fani-kayode was becoming too hot for Jonathan to bear in the former’s vociferous attacks. Notable of such attacks was name-calling he made of Jonathan when he described the Nigerian President as “Olori oko ti ko l’epon”, meaning “A President with no balls”- interpreting as ‘an incompetent president’.

So Jonathan sent some robust bones to the proverbial dog of Femi Fani-Kayode, thus conditioning him to salivate. Did Jonathan tell FFK -’Stop attacking me’. ‘Bark for me instead and I will ask EFCC to drop money laundring charges against you’. Nobody is sure of what Jonathan said to Femi Fani-Kayode on the day of the visit. However, it was most certain that FFK had been conditioned when he came out of the meeting with GEJ and said “This is a Presidential Villa; and the President is a President of Nigeria. Every single person in this country that is a Nigerian is entitled to come here from time to time when the doors are open to come and pay their respect to the wonderful people that are here. As a

Nigerian, I have done that today and I’m delighted to be here”. And since then the Ife guy has been salivating dirty!

And while he does that, Fani-Kayode is doing some other things along the line. One of such things he is doing is plotting a ‘clean landing’ for himself once he either sees that he has had enough of the bones he salivates therefrom or once his ‘bone-giver’ extincts. The bone giver- Jonathan/PDP motivation is likely to extinct too soon; going by results of recent opinion polls on the coming presidential election, which puts the chances of President Jonathan at less than 36% against Buhari’s 62%. Once this happens and Buhari comes victorious after March 28th, and FFK gets cleared of the EFCC charges before then, the Ife guy will move on to another bone-giver that would make him salivate.

However, no matter the noise FFK currently makes for Jonathan/PDP by the manner he attacks APC stalwarts like Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the standard bearer of the party General Muhammadu Buhari and others; just as he paints Jonathan next to God and his PDP ‘the new paradise’, Nigerians would not forget in a hurry such reflexes that were ‘hard wired’ into FFK regarding what he said about Jonathan, the PDP, and Buhari some months before now. “Jonathan must... prostrate flat on the floor for Buhari”, Femi Fani-Kayode once said.

Here are excerpts of some of what Femi Fani-Kayode once said about Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and sundry others.

God rejected PdP and its Leader -Femi Fani-Kayode

“PDP “is a party that has been rejected by God and whose leaders are suffering God’s judgement for their unjust, gluttonous, wicked, foul and evil ways.

Nigerian Military will Achieve Nothing” -Femi Fani-Kayode

“In the same way I have to say that no matter how commendable and honourable in intention the recent changes in our military High Command may be, they will achieve nothing...

Jonathan Must resign as President and Prostrate for Buhari

“If Goodluck Jonathan wants his fortunes

and the fortunes of his party to change and if he wants peace to return to our shores, he simply has to do twelve things. Firstly he has to resign as President forthwith and undertake to stay out of Nigerian politics for the next ten years and confine himself to fishing in Otueke. Secondly, if he cannot step down, he must give a public undertaking to the Nigerian people that he will not run for re-election in 2015 and tell them that if he changes his mind and decides to do so at the last minute, they should stone him. Thirdly, he must go and prostrate flat on the floor with his face touching the ground before seven of the most respected and distinguished men in this country and tell them that he is very sorry for the mess he has created and he must refuse to get up until they swear by the Holy Bible or Holy Koran that they have truly forgiven him for destroying our country. Those men are President Olusegun Obasanjo, General Ibrahim Babangida, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, General TY Danjuma, General Muhammadu Buhari, Vice President Atiku Abubakar and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. Fourthly, he must write an open letter of apology to the 36 Governors of the Federation, the Senate President, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Chief Justice of the Federation for his manipulative ways and the gross incompetence and ineptitude that he has displayed whilst running the affairs of this country over the last three years.

“Fif thly, he must wri te a le t ter of condolence and pay a token fee of compensation as restitution to the families of every single one of the 7000 innocent Nigerians that have been killed by Boko Haram in the last three years. Sixthly, he must take-off the kid gloves, stop interfering and give the military the green light to use all necessary means to prosecute the war against Boko Haram and he must win that war. Seventhly, he must dismantle the death squads and the group of deadly snipers that he has allegedly commissioned to create havoc and he must tear up the list of one thousand opposition figures that he has been accused of drawing up for elimination by Obasanjo and others. Eighthly, he must remove one Esho Jinadu, who is better known as Mr. Buruji Kashamu (a rather strange name that does not have it’s origins

in Yoruba land but instead sounds like a low quality brand of Indian tea) as the leader of the PDP in the South-West and honour the demand of the American Courts and the ruling of the Nigerian Federal High Court and Court of Appeal by extraditing him to the United States of America to answer serious charges of drug smuggling in that country forthwith. Ninthly, he must direct his Ijaw supremacist kinsmen to desist from threatening the lives of other Nigerians that oppose his government and who keep threatening brimstone and fire and the dismemberment of Nigeria if he is not allowed to come back in 2015.

“Tenthly, he must undertake to stop serving kaikai at the Presidential Villa and he must dispense with the services of one Mama Brandy, a well-known Ijaw ‘’prayer warrior’’ and spiritualist. Eleventhly he must pull down every satanic alter that may have been erected in the Presidency and consecrate and re-dedicate the whole place to the Living God. And twelfthly, he must give a public undertaking that the other four Presidents that run this country with him and that act as his ‘’Co-Presidents’’ will also step down with him forthwith or, if he insists on staying till 2015, give an undertaking that he will fire them with immediate effect and bar them from playing any role whatsoever in the running of the affairs of our country from now on. Those four co-Presidents are, in order of seniority, 1. Dame Patience Jonathan (the First Lady) 2. Allison Dizeani Madueke (the Hon. Minister of Petroleum Resources) 3. Stella Oduah (the not so Hon. Minister of Aviation) and 4. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (the Hon. Minister of Finance and the Co-ordinating Minister). President Goodluck Jonathan, even though he is the public face of the small cabal of co-Presidents that presently rule Nigeria and even though he is the one that was given a lawful mandate from the Nigerian people in 2011 to lead our country, comes a distant fifth in the pecking order. He is co-President number 5 and woe betide him if he crosses the line and tries to challenge the position or usurp the duties of any of his four seniors. That is the sordid and degenerate level that our country has been reduced to by this little man from Otueke”

•JONATHAN •fANI-KAYODE

By raSheed MaBay-

20 OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March 14, 2015 55521 foreigN News OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March 14, 2015

U.S. Exports At Risk As Bird Flu Enters Heart Of Poultry Country feature

a case of bird flu confirmed Wednesday in the heart of America’s poultry region, is certain to mean more export restrictions, increasing u.S.

supply and likely forcing the world’s biggest poultry companies to trim prices.

The U.S. government announced the infection of highly pathogenic H5N2 avian flu in turkeys in Arkansas — home to Tyson Foods Inc, the world’s biggest chicken company. The virus is unlikely to kill enough U.S. birds to offset the drop in overseas demand, however.

There will be “more product on the domestic marke t and tha t wi l l depress prices,” said Jessica Sampson, agricultural economist at Livestock Marketing Information Center.

Shares in producers Tyson, Pilgrim’s Pride Corp and Sanderson Farms Inc tumbled on Wednesday, with Tyson’s stock price hitting its lowest point in five months and the stock price for JBS SA unit Pilgrim’s Pride dropping as much as 9 percent.

The USA Poultry & Egg Export Council said it expects 30 to 40 additional countries to impose new trade restrictions on U.S. poultry and eggs in the $5.7 billion export market. Additional limits could come from Mexico, the top U.S. chicken importer, which already is blocking poul t ry imports f rom Minnesota, Missouri and California due to bird flu, the trade group said.

Previous cases of avian flu in other states triggered China and South Korea to recently impose bans, still in effect, on U.S. poultry imports. Last year, they accounted for about $428.5 million in export sales of poultry meat and products, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

Other countries have banned exports from only states or counties with positive cases of avian flu.

With the export market already hit by the strong dollar, “we don’t need anything else that would make those exports any softer,” said Mike Cockrell, chief financial officer for Sanderson Farms.

T h e U n i t e d S t a t e s exports about 20 percent of the chicken it produces and about 14 percent of the turkey produced, according to Livestock Marketing Information Center.

While the H5N2 strain poses no threat to human health, according to USDA, it is deadly to poultry. Avian flu can spread rapidly through a flock, killing birds in as little as 24 hours.

So far, viral strains have been identified in wild birds and commercial turkey farms, predominantly west of the Rocky Mountains. But the industry has been on alert since Minnesota and Missouri confirmed cases in the past week.

Minnesota is the nation’s leading turkey producer, while Arkansas ranks

third and Missouri is fifth, according to the USDA.

The poultry sector fears the virus could spread to the much bigger domestic chicken industry. Arkansas is the third largest chicken producer.

P r I c I N G queStIONS

Poultry companies have been enjoying large profits recently thanks to high meat prices and declining feed costs. In January, Tyson reported operating income of $351 million for its chicken business in the quarter ended Dec. 27, up almost 40 percent on the year.

Trade restrictions could drive down prices by 5 to 10 percent in the United

States for dark meat, which makes up the majority of chicken exports, said H.L. Goodwin, a poultry economist at the University

of Arkansas.How poultry companies

will handle such pricing woes is not yet known. At North Carolina-based

Iraqi Forces Slowed By Snipers And Bombs In TikritIraqI security forces and mainly Shi’ite militia

exchanged fire sporadically with Islamic State fighters in Tikrit on Thursday, a day after they

pushed into Saddam Hussein’s home city in their biggest offensive yet against the militants.

A source at the local m i l i t a r y c o m m a n d reported intermittent gunfire in the morning as the army and militia fighters struggled to advance in the southern, northern and northwestern parts of the city which they took in the last 24 hours.

Islamic State fighters stormed into Tikrit last June during a lightning offensive that was halted just outside Baghdad. They have since used the complex of palaces

built in Tikrit under Saddam, the executed former president, as their headquarters.

The military source said the insurgents still held the presidential complex and at least three other districts in the center of Tikrit, holding up further army advances with snipers and bombs. A Reuters photographer saw one car bomb explode on the southern edge of the city, and security officials say Islamic State fighters have booby- t rapped

abandoned buildings.If Iraq’s Shi’ite-led

government retakes Tikrit it would be the first city clawed back from the Sunni insurgents and would give it momentum in the next, pivotal stage of the campaign to recapture Mosul, the largest city in the north.

Mosul i s a l so the biggest city held by the ultra-radical Islamic State, who now rule a self-declared cross-border caliphate in Sunni regions of Syria and Iraq.

B L O w N - u P BrIdGe

More than 20,000 Iraqi troops and Iranian-backed Shi’ite Muslim militias

known as Hashid Shaabi, supported by local Sunni Muslim tribes, launched the offensive for Tikrit 10 days ago, advancing from the east and along the banks of the Tigris.

On Tuesday they took the town of al-Alam on the northern edge of Tikrit, paving the way for an attack on the city itself.

North of Tikrit, the militants blew up al-Fatha bridge linking the north-south highway along the Tigris river with the Islamic State-held town of Hawijah to the north-east. They erected barricades and gathered 20 vehicles by the blown up bridge, an official at the Salahuddin province operations command said.Khamenei Slams Republican Letter On Iran, Hits At

U.S. ‘Backstabbing’IraN’s Supreme Leader hit out on Thursday

at a letter by U.S. Republican senators threatening to undo any nuclear deal between

Washington and Tehran, saying he was worried because the united States was known for “backstabbing”, Mehr news agency reported.

A y a t o l l a h A l i Khamenei added at a meeting with President Hassan Rouhani and s e n i o r c l e r i c s t h a t whenever negotiators made p rogress , t he A m e r i c a n s b e c a m e “harsher, tougher and coarser”, Mehr reported.

The letter signed by 47 Republican senators warned Iran that any nuclear deal made with U.S. President Barack Obama could last only as long as he remained in office, in an unusual intervention into U.S. foreign policy-making.

Mehr quoted Khamenei as saying: “Of course I am worried, because

backstabbing.”“Every time we reach

a stage where the end of the negotiations is in sight, the tone of the other side, specifically the Americans, becomes harsher, coarser and tougher. This is the nature of their tricks and deceptions.”

The negotiations, which resume in Lausanne, Switzerland, next week, are at a critical juncture as the sides try to meet an end of March target for an interim deal, with a final deal in June.

Khamenei added that a speech to Congress this month by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin

Netanyahu on Tehran’s nuclear program was “risible”. In the speech, which aligned himself with Obama’s Republican foes, Netanyahu warned the United States that it was negotiating a bad deal with Iran that could spark a “nuclear nightmare.”

Iraqi Soldiers Killed In ‘Friendly Fire’ Anbar Air Strikethe other side is known for opacity, deceit and

SOLdIerS from an Iraqi army unit in the west ern province of anbar have been killed in an apparent ‘friendly fire’ incident, an Iraqi mili-

tary officer and a police source said on Thursday.The military source said 22 soldiers had been killed when an aircraft, which he

said was from the U.S.-led coalition, bombed the headquarters of an army company on the edge of Ramadi city, Anbar’s pro-vincial capital.

A military spokesman for the coalition said it had carried out an air strike in the area on Wednesday but that it had hit a posi-

tion held by Islamic State fighters.

“This strike did not re-sult in any friendly casual-ties,” Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Gilleran said.

The Iraq military source said Iraqi aircraft had not operated in the area for two months. “We don’t have any Iraqi war planes carrying out combat du-

ties in Anbar”, he said.An Iraqi police source

said dozens of soldiers had been killed in what he described as a friendly fire incident, without identify-ing the nationality of the aircraft which carried out the air strike.

Iraqi forces have been struggling for more than a year to push back Is-lamic State militants who control most of the Sunni Muslim Anbar province and swept through north-ern and central Iraq last

June.The a rmy, backed

by militia forces, has launched an offensive to drive Islamic State out of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, but the militants fought back in Anbar on Wednes-day, launching at least 13 suicide car bomb attacks on army positions.

The military source said Wednesday’s air strike came after officers ap-pealed for aerial support in response to those at-tacks.

The insurgents have also fought back elsewhere in Iraq, launching 13 suicide car bombs against army positions on Wednesday in Ramadi, about 90 km (55 miles) west of Baghdad.

On Wednesday night they captured a bridge over the Euphrates river in Ramadi and attacked an army position with two booby-trapped armored veh ic les , a member of a local Sunni tribal movement said.

Butterball LLC, a “limited number” of turkeys from farms in Missouri and Arkansas that supply birds to the company have been

diagnosed with H5N2 bird flu, according to a statement.

The company, which accounts for 20 percent of all U.S. turkey production, declined to comment on its pricing.

Tyson also declined to discuss the impact bird flu may have on the company, but said no flocks grown for Tyson have been diagnosed with the virus.

Tyson “has the ability to ship products from multiple states, so we believe we can meet demand for both domestic and global marke ts ,” spokesman Worth Sparkman said.

•OBAMA

The Futility Of The ‘Big Lie’ Strategy By The PDP Against Tinubu“IF you tell a lie that’s big enough, and you tell it often enough, people will believe you are telling the truth, even when what you are saying is total crap.” - Richard Belzer in his book UFOs, JFK, and Elvis: Conspiracies You Don’t Have To Be Crazy To Believe

From time immemorial, dishonourable men have thrived in politics by peddling fabricated and concocted lies and half-truths. And while truth and sound principles will eventually outshine falsehood and opportunism, those who deal in such stock record some successes, albeit temporarily, at the expense of the people striving to bring some difference to politics. Sir Winston Churchill was therefore right when he observed that “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on”.

These charlatans and opportunists are champions of the Big Lie theory endorsed and popularized by Adolf Hitler and his chief propagandist, Joseph Goebbels and simplified in Richard Belzer’s book referenced above. This is the strategy now adopted by the PDP apparatchik in their futile attempt to politically lynch Bola Tinubu, the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Their grand plan, which is not new, is to discredit him and other honourable men in the progressive fold in the belief that if the same big lies are repeated over and over again, people will begin to believe them and their targets will become discredited thereby truncating efforts to wrest power from the clueless and inept PDP politicians.

They adopted this strategy in Ekiti State. They deployed it in the State of Osun and are now employing it fully as the national elections approach. A manifestation of their desperation is the recent churning out of unsubstantiated allegations both on television and in the social media against Tinubu, Buhari and a host of APC leaders. Of note is that they seem to have gone into overdrive in their circulation of outlandish accusations of inordinate wealth and property acquisition Bola Tinubu. These politicians turned blackmailers who are clearly of the PDP brand are identifiable. They must not be left to roam free and get away with libel and their criminal activities in character assassination. Tinubu and the APC must approach the courts of the land and, with the decorum and formalities afforded by the rules of courts, put them to the strictest proof of these allegations. Because of their cowardice, they work as faceless persons.

However, they have now been uncovered. The Fayoses; Fani-Kayodes. Mimikos, Olisa Metu of this world. They have also recruited many into their ranks using slush monies. They go by phony names and acronyms shielding their cowardly sponsors.

In the past, these characters made allegations against Tinubu and went ahead to orchestrate his arraignment before the Code of Conduct Tribunal. It is a matter of record that all the charges against Bola Tinubu were quashed by that tribunal. Several other allegations against him remain in the realm of speculative rumour, with no evidence to back them up. In the latest round of falsehood being circulated in some sections of the media, a list of “purported choice properties said to belong to a Chieftain of APC is

being peddled. Those behind this list do this without regard to whether the properties in the list in fact exist.

Their story admittedly describes them as ‘purported choice properties’, and raise doubts of ownership by stating ‘said to belong’!!! How irresponsible and how manifestly mischievous!

For the records and for the avoidance of doubt, it is clear that these allegations are totally false and baseless and this attempt to play on our people’s collective ignorance and emotion is sad. The ‘Big Lie’ strategy of the propagators of these lies is about to come to an end. Because he who alleges must prove, these attackers must face the law and provide incontrovertible proof.

This same Tinubu inspired 25-year development plan of Lagos, helped lay the foundation for the infrastructural renewal, revenue breakthrough and related reforms in Lagos. No elected governor, past or present today in Nigeria equals the vision, vigour and vitality Bola Tinubu brought to governance. Today, Lagos is a national and global model of good governance. Thanks to Tinubu and his party.

Indeed, the falsity of the accusations against Tinubu and Fashola by the faceless would be apparent to independent and fair-minded citizens if, in the absence of the opportunity for formal proof and denial otherwise afforded in responding to identifiable accusers, and with the benefit of seeing

through the Big Lie Strategy, they consider:

- Whether accusations of secrecy bordering on the Public Office Holder (Payment of Pension) Law of 2007 are valid and reasonable when: (a) the law is available for public scrutiny in the Lagos State of Nigeria Official Gazette Extraordinary No. 37 Vol. 40 of May 18, 2007; (b) the law, in fact, documents the benefits payable to retired public officers instead of arbitrary pay-outs; and (c) the approach agrees with internationally acceptable practices including the model in the United States under the Former Presidents Act, Presidential Transition Act and Former Presidents Protection Act.

- Whether there is, in fact, a property on Oyinkan Abayomi that has served as Guest House to the Lagos State Government since 1979?

- Whether the outlandish value of the properties listed in the publication are not arbitrary, unsubstantiated and indicative of the mischievous actions of desperate political operatives.

- Whether reputable publicly traded organizations with internationally sanct ioned codes of corporate governance such as Oando Plc and UACN Plc would engage, without obvious consequences, in such shady deals as described in the publication.

- Whether the fact that I share a common surname with the CEO of Oando Plc is not being used as a

fodder to feed damaging conspiracy theories and score cheap political points at the expense of the truth.

- Whether the relocation of the

Ikosi Road Campus of the Lagos State Polytechnic to its permanent site at Ikorodu was not in fulfilment of the Master Plan for the institution.

- Whether it is not lazy and outlandish to suggest that every major property developer in Lagos State is fronting for me. Are most of these developments not funded by facilities from the banks?

- Whether the matters relating to Federal Government properties in Lagos State are not presently before the Supreme Court of Nigeria and whether there is any shred of documented evidence substantiating the accusations concerning the old Federal Secretariat.

- Whether sharing a surname with a doctor working at the Critical Care Unit of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital is sufficient to reasonably conclude that I personally own the unit. Is that not laughable in itself?

The truth of the matter is that the detractors do not understand Tinubu and the progressives with their style and innovative approach to governance. Not because they are incapable of doing so, but because the years of waste and charlatanism presided over by these same detractors have become conditioned to their tired, regressive and destructive approach to governance, wealth management and infrastructure development. Tinubu is a trail blazer and represents that new progressive and aggressive generation of managers who, having won the confidence of their people to occupy political offices, have embarked on new methods of financing projects. This group has fully tapped and developed the potentials of Public Private Partnership initiatives. By so doing, being able to complete and embark on projects that only decades of reliance on federal allocations would achieve. Yes, private sector people benefited but the benefits were legitimate and the people got value. And, what is more, it accords with international best practices.

The APC approach to governance in Lagos has empowered the private sector players. It has led to the creation of jobs and opportunities for ordinary citizens. Citizens have gotten value and are positioned to continue to get long term value. This approach has in fact, reduced corruption and waste in governance.

Do the PDP detractors know these? Yes, they do. Why, then, are they falsifying the records and creating and spreading malicious innuendos? Because they want to play on the people’s readiness and tendency (justifiable by years of disappointing governance) to believe that ALL politicians are corrupt and that any new agenda is an avenue to siphon funds. It is evil, devilish, criminal and morally reprehensible for our detractors to attempt to take advantage of our people in this way.

I have no doubt whatsoever that the objectives of the publishers of this otherwise defamatory articles are to malign the person of Tinubu and attack the viability of the APC platform, to manipulate the people and impede the progress of the Progressives. It is an act of desperation and politically motivated character assassination carried to its highest and nauseating level against Tinubu. Like it failed in the past, this attempt again will kiss the dust.

By aLFred OMOLewa

•TINuBu

22 OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March 14, 2015 55523feature OSuN DEfENDER Saturday, March 14, 2015

Why I Support Buhari, My JailerI found Lola Shoneyin’s piece on

Buhari titled, “How My Father’s Jailer Can Offer Nigeria A Fresh

Start” very engaging although it dredged up some very painful memories. It took me down memory lane; indeed, it was a vivid reminder of an awful road on which l and others like Audu Ogbeh, now an ardent Buhari backer, travelled. It was my painful duty as the “Captain” of the detainees, to receive Lola’s father, Engr. Tinuoye Shoneyin into the Abeokuta prison and to make him as comfortable as possible in the extremely difficult prison environment, providing him with clothes, a towel and toiletries. Engr. Shoneyin had, as a matter of courtesy, responded to the invitation of the government of Ogun State then led by Colonel Oladipo Diya, who later became the deputy to Gen. Sani Abacha, to answer some questions and had expected to be back home that evening. He was not to return home for six months!

Lola’s account dwelt on the torture that she (at such a young age) and her family had to endure and the telling effect of such an experience on the family. Many detainees never recovered from the torture and the injustice that this experience represented. In many cases, mine included, there was no accusation, much less a charge. One slight misstatement in Lola’s account was that the detention was at the behest of Col. Tunde Idiagbon, the erstwhile deputy to General Buhari. I doubt if that is quite true. The problem with autocracy is that once the atmosphere has been established or allowed by the leader, many tin gods at the various levels of the strata will for any number of reasons, exploit the situation for the purpose of settling personal and petty scores including disputations over girlfriends! So in the case of Lola’s father, the local despot at the time was Colonel Oladipo Diya who was mean, brutal and sadistic and locked up as many people as he wanted, for good, bad or sometimes no reason at all. He flogged civil servants for lateness, taxed the people on every imaginable score, and signed for nearly 20 people who had been sentenced to death (none of whom his predecessor permitted to be killed), to be executed by hanging in one day. He reveled in making people suffer wherewith he was promptly given the name of “Kunya” meaning tormentor which was the direct opposite of what his name “Diya” means in the Yoruba language. He was, indeed, the harbinger of torment and suffering. He it was who saw a ghost in every situation. If the sun was too bright he blamed it on the dethroned politicians. He was a cruel taskmaster who tried irrationally to get water out of stone. At a stage he rounded up

contractors who had done various jobs for the state government and dictated that they should either pay certain arbitrary fines or be locked up in prison.

I was in the gulag for 18 months, 16 of which l spent in the Abeokuta prison. Prior to this time, I had presided over three Ministries in four years and three months. There was never an accusation or a charge of any sort against me. His investigators were surprised at how clean my affairs were and how l could succinctly explain every transaction l was involved in including providing photocopies of cheques that even pre-dated my appointment. “Were you expecting that this type of thing would happen? Why did you leave a thriving law practice for a job like this?” they asked me repeatedly. Therein lies the dilemma of our country that needs good people to preside over its affairs, yet castigates the few who dare to get in the fray. “The punishment for the wise who refuse to take part in the government of their people,” said a Greek philosopher, “is to be ruled by fools.”

I came to understand that Diya’s grouse with me was that l was so close to the late Chief Olabisi Onabanjo, my governor, and that there was no way of getting Onabanjo without getting Adefulu his political son and confidant! “Onabanjo did nothing Adefulu did

not know of,” Diya was reported to have said repeatedly. So l had to be purged! Oluokun the head of state security, himself a dastardly character, was Diya’s hatchet man. When all efforts at intimidation and harassment failed, they changed tactics and tried to recruit me as an informant against Onabanjo. It soon became clear to them however, that I was not going to be party to their pursuit of crass injustice and motive hunting. I asked Oluokun pointedly to cock his gun and shoot and kill me because under no circumstances would l be part of such villainy. In any case, unless l wanted to become a liar, such incriminating evidence did not exist except in the figment of Diya’s convoluted imagination. Onabanjo was the quintessential leader - open, fair minded, as straight as a spoke and a great lover of the people; a man who, to this day, several years after his demise, l still hold in the highest regard.

At the time of my incarceration, my family was at a more delicate stage than the Shoneyins, because it was younger and less endowed. My first son Adeoye, was just under 10 years and our last daughter, Dayo was three months old. I was 37 years old at the time of the coup. My family was subjected to a long and extremely humiliating deprivation. It was the unjust compensation l received for a job to which l gave the very best of my life at a very young age (try as you may, such injustice never leaves you. The wound may heal but the

scar is there and sometimes stares you in the face). I tried hard to be strong and for the most part, l was. The knowledge that I had served with the very best of my ability in a job l truly enjoyed, gave me peace of mind and assurance. The open and vocal agitation of many well-meaning citizens such as Professor Wole Soyinka for my release was an act of grace for which l will forever be grateful. The only time l broke down was the day my son, Adeoye, turned 10. With a smuggled recorder, I had recorded a birthday message for him and his young siblings admonishing them to be strong in the knowledge that God was on our side. After recording the message, l wept profusely. It was terrible! My co-prisoners, including my Deputy Governor, the late Chief Sesan Soluade, and the present Emir of Suleija, Alhaji Anwal Ibrahim, the erstwhile Governor of Niger State, and the others, tried hard to console me. I had been the strong one, the encourager of the brethren, but l guess the cup had become too full and it ran over.

While time heals, the impact of such injustice endures. It leaves a telling effect which you carry for the rest of your life. Ironically, when l was finally released, l was in hospital where l had just undergone an emergency operation. Liberty had come at last but it met me totally broken and incapacitated. At my release and after, no one offered any apology for this gruesome and very unjust recompense. Nobody, without due process, should ever have the power to visit such humiliation and injustice on any human being. The irony of dictatorship is that a leader can be so conscientiously wrong in his crusading mission. The Buhari regime was very wrong in my case as in the case of several others. I, along with many others, had come into office with the purest motive of service. It was what l had always wanted to do. I thought it was my life’s mission and when the opportunity came l did the work as if my life depended on it. I left a lucrative practice to serve my people. I was totally accountable, yet l was unfairly thrown into jail for no just cause for 18 months!

That was many years ago and since l have focused on re-building my life and raising my family. I have prayed and tried hard to forgive my unjust tormentors but l know that the scar is there and people like Lola Shoneyin stroke that weak point now and again, albeit unwittingly. Obviously this is not an experience that can be wished away because it evidently affected my being and changed my life fundamentally. It makes me appreciate people like Mandela so much - 26 years on Robben Island (have you been there?) and he came out with no bitterness and no guile! Such men are rare!

Understandably then, it has taken some effort for me to embrace Buhari’s candidacy. I have never voted for him. I did not even like him. But as my friend, Audu Ogbeh said to me once, “so much has gone wrong with our polity, that our emphasis now must not be on ourselves but on the survival of the nation.” I have no doubt he is right. This is a time when the overriding interest must be that of the country. As a student of history, l know that while constitutions can be copied and adopted, in the end every nation will only learn by its national experience. The history of many of the democracies we admire today is replete with unimaginable and odious occurrences that characterized their development. It is obvious to me that the trust we reposed in President Jonathan in 2011 has been wantonly squandered.

The sobering state of our nation and realpolitik has made me take another look at Buhari. How viable is he for our polity given the available options? Is the General, the devil he is portrayed to be, or a victim of circumstances or a misunderstood individual? To me President Jonathan has been such a disappointment in many critical areas of our national life. There has been unprecedented violence and blood letting under this administration, which, naively in my view, treated the Boko Haram insurgency with kid gloves and a total lack of resolve. Today, Boko Haram has established a formidable force and has succeeded, before our very eyes, in changing the map of Nigeria. The President appears to have turned deaf ears to the voices of wisdom and surrounded himself with cronies whose main pre-occupation is to exploit him. Some of his spokesmen have made a virtue of rascality and turned public relations upside down. Miscreants who should be in jail for their past deeds are the ones now threatening that our collective vote must go a particular way or there will be insurrection. We never heard of “democracy” at gunpoint till now.

To the discerning, it is clear that the Boko Haram insurgency has been employed as a source of inscrutable abuse, or how else do we explain a Nigerian private plane filled with raw US dollars being impounded abroad? How many such planeloads escaped without being caught is anybody’s guess, yet our troops are said to be so ill equipped that the insurgents have better arms. All this despite the huge sums that have been voted for defence under this administration; one wonders where all that money went. Then the massive corruption in every sphere of public office - pension funds stuffed into pillows and mattresses, etc. The disgusting state pardon for a man who, before an incredulous world, broke the terms to a court order and left

Britain dressed as a woman! This is not how a leader should exercise such hallowed prerogative power. The President’s conduct sent a chilling message down the spine of the polity that corruption and stealing are the way to go. You can add to that the company of shady men wanted abroad for all manner of crimes, including drug offences, who have been installed in positions of leadership in the PDP or have been fielded as Senatorial candidates. The management or lack of it of our foreign reserves (which have become totally depleted) and reports of billions of missing dollars dominate the air. Everybody who is working hard is in trouble. Joblessness has risen to record levels. The youths are, justifiably restless because they have no future in the present dispensation. The tales of woe are just endless. Billions of dollars have disappeared into petroleum subsidy yet even the cost of kerosene, the poor man’s fuel, is at an all-time high. It is the oil sheiks that are being subsidized not the ordinary people. To say the ship of state is clearly adrift in Nigeria is an understatement. A land that should be flowing with milk and honey has become the laughing stock of the international community. We simply can no longer tolerate this grotesque level of gluttony and

of corruption. There is an urgent need for a change otherwise, we face a huge problem and social dis-location ahead beyond what we already have.

These are the reasons why l have embraced Buhari. If you look at his past, and some of the statements credited to him, he is not an easy man for a person like me to embrace. But 30 years is a long time and l honestly believe he has had enough time to reflect and to change. He is no more a military officer. He has retained a sharp, social conscience for the people. I am impressed with the hunger with which he has fought for elections. I want to believe that it is out of an earnest desire to work for the people and to do some things right that General Buhari has struggled so hard to win the nation’s leadership through the electoral process. While he may not be a saint, he is certainly not a villain. His choice of a very good man in Professor Yemi Osinbajo, for a Vice President gave me the assurance that Buhari was listening to the comments on his areas of weakness. There are enough checks and balances in a democratic set up to make fears of a return to dictatorship a joke. I am also impressed by his modest lifestyle, unlike many of his ilk who live in opulence and indulgence. This says something about the man. I can trust this man

with my wallet in a way l cannot do with Jonathan who appears to have forgotten where he came from. Jonathan has lost the golden opportunity to fundamentally affect the lives of the ordinary folks. I am persuaded that it will be a tragedy for us to continue in this drift for another four years. While Buhari is far from being my ideal candidate and l worry about some of his deficiencies, my perception is that although he may be short on the skills required for the modern management of a state - technology, economic management etc. - his record shows that he has the ability to enlist support. I hope this time he will choose the right people and avoid those who will use his name to do iniquity. While Buhari may not be the ideal candidate we need, he is, certainly the best we have. There is a time in the history of a nation when an individual is needed to rescue it or perform a historic role. As it was with Winston Churchill who provided Britain with the much needed war-time leadership, General Charles de Gaulle, who restored the confidence of France, Madiba, Nelson Mandela of South Africa, who championed the cause of majority rule and showed the way to national reconciliation and our own Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo who provided leadership to a country on the brink after the Abacha years, my belief is that this is the hour for Muhammadu Buhari to stop the torment of a haemorrhaging nation and restore its confidence.

Lastly, the General owes me one. I will still like Buhari to vocalize an apology and offer some succour to people like me whom his government brutalized in the past. It is the least he can do. To do so is not weakness. Indeed, it is strength to admit the mistakes of the past and to promote national reconciliation. For now, even ahead of the apology, and in the national interest, l have thrown-in my hat with Buhari. So has Lola Shoneyin’s father. Now 87 but still spritely and alert, my big brother and comrade, Engr. Tinuoye Shoneyin, always a big heart, is enthusiastically by my side at political rallies and party support meetings. Our jailer has become our hope. Life is indeed nothing if not an agglomeration of ironies.

•Adefulu MfR is a Lagos lawyer.

Why I Support Buhari, My Jailer

By adeyeMI adeFuLu

feature

•BuHARI

•BuHARI

Saturday, March 14, 2015

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Why Jega Should Conduct The Rescheduled Polls

AUDACIOUS ExPLOIT

with MurtaLa aGBOOLa

teL: 0806-119-7897E-mail: murtalamuag@yahoo.com

OUR democracy has been given different epithet. Some have referred to it as fledging,

other say, young or nascent. Indeed, all these adjectives, which help to describe our democracy, are true. The fulcrum on which democracy revolves is election. In general terms, election acceptable to all segments of the society must not only be free and fair, but transparent and credible.

Elections are properly so-called if it is in a multiparty system. Elections in a sole –party state are usually stage-managed by the powers that be. Election in a democracy is the only powerful weapon, which citizens (electorate) use to either retain a sitting government or throw it away.

It is the fear of the reaction of the voters that stimulates a party in power to do the wish of the people. But for periodic election in a democracy, governments would just act arbitrarily.

Since 1999, the nomenclature of the electoral management body has remained Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The body has had the following as their helmsmen. They include Justice Ephraim Akpata, Dr Abel Goubadia, Professor Maurice Iwu and the current office holder, Professor Attahiru Jega. Of the lot, Iwu’s tenure was controversial. Jega came on board with a lot of credibility and recognition. As an erstwhile National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), whose tenure clashed with the military authority while holding sway then, made him popular amongst the populace. He was also a member of the Justice Muhammad Uwais Committee set up to fashion a new system for a formidable electoral commission. Despite the initial hiccups, the first election conducted by Jega in 2011 was a far improvement upon what Iwu did in April 2007.

By local and internat ional standards, Jega’s conduct of election has become acceptable to all. Jega as a human being may have his own mistakes, but the sincerity of purpose, his doggedness and the zeal to bring forth good election cannot be questioned.

President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan has had cause in the past to eulogize Jega for the conduct of elections. How he turned out to be villain is what beats the imagination of many Nigerians.

Some critical minds have alluded to the fact that Jonathan is under pressure and believes if election is conducted free and fair, he may not win. Consequently, the presidency and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are doing everything possible

to ensure that Jega is removed and a pliant person is put in place to do their bidding. The opposition party, especially the All Progressives Congress (APC) has been very active and has been able to predict the action of the PDP accurately. Before the election was rescheduled, APC had hinted that, the PDP planned to shift the election forward. Despite repeated denials by the PDP, it came to pass.

The National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd) first gave hint about the shift in London at Chatham House. The Federal Government claimed it was a personal view of the NSA, which was not coterminous with that of the government. Events later proved that there was a deliberate plan to effect the change on the part of the

government.The alibi given by the INEC was

that of security concerns in the troubled North-East geo-political zone of the country, where the band of terrorists have continued to kill and maim innocent citizens. The February 14th 2015 election therefore could not hold because, according to the INEC National Chairman, the security agencies could not provide adequate security.

The card-reader, which ordinarily ought to assist the electoral process by authenticating the permanent voter’s card, is being fiercely rejected by the PDP. Various arguments from the sublime to the mundane are being put forward by the ruling party to reject the use of the card-readers. To some PDP stalwarts, if INEC deployed the card-readers for March election after February 14th, when the presidential

election ought to hold, then it tells us that INEC is not ready. Plausible as the argument may be, are we all not involved one way or the other? The National Assembly standing committees on INEC play an oversight function on INEC. Did they perform their roles as they ought to? If they did, then they would have been abreast with the level of preparation of INEC towards the election.

It is, however, too late in the day to start apportioning blames. The right thing to do now is for all and sundry to co-operate with INEC, so that the election would be held as rescheduled. The use of card-readers is essential so that cloned cards cannot be used in the election. The only way to ensure that genuine cards are used on election day is to deploy the card-readers. Professor Jega started this election and should see to its conclusion. He should not be distracted on the job because we are in a crucial point in our journey of democracy.

The election this year holds a lot for us as a nation. If it is not properly conducted, the repercussion may be too heavy to contemplate.

In any case, has the presidency or any court of law chastise INEC for dereliction of duty under Jega?

Is the rumoured sacking of Jega the appropriate thing he deserves now? If a new person is brought in mid-way, would such a person take all praises and blames that go with the election. Is history not trying to repeat itself? Professor Humphrey Nwosu, the chairman of the then National Electoral Commission (NEC) in 1993 went ahead to conduct the June 12th election in spite of a court order obtained under questionable circumstance.

The PDP schemers are looking at the statutes on what the party can possibly do to truncate the dream of Jega conducting the rescheduled elections.

The moderate strategists are looking at the core civil service rules, which compel a top civil servant to proceed on three months pre-retirement leave. These people, who knows, have said it is unworkable in this situation because appointments like that of Jega carry a specific period, which is renewable if the President is satisfied and it is concurred by the legislative arm.

The extremists like Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State have called for the outright removal of Jega. According to Fayose, heavens would not fall if Jega is removed. While it is true that heavens would not fall if the President sacks Jega arbitrarily, we should beware of the consequence of such an action.

The trials and troubles the country is going through now is enough to make us give our action wide thoughts, so that we would not put ourselves into problem. Jega may not be a saint, like none of us is, we should support INEC to conduct a free, fair, peaceful and credible election. In my mind he has done his best, which to most Nigerians is good enough to make him complete the remaining. Dropping him at this time would not serve the best interest of the country.

•JEGA