Tukur Mamu, a staunch ally of PDP’s presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar who was first to establish contact with the terrorist attackers of the Kaduna-Abuja train attack and conducted negotiations for abducted citizens, has been arrested and detained by the DSS over his role during the incident which crippled operations on the rail line and was suspected to have political undertones. Mamu was nabbed in Egypt while en route to Saudi Arabia for the lesser hajj, and was promptly repatriated to Nigeria via the Kano International Airport where operatives of the DSS were waiting to take him into custody. Explaining the…
Author: Albus Dauda
Peter Obi and his supporters have made fiscal prudence and transparent management of government resources the main proposition of his longshot campaign for president. Voters have been inundated with numerous uncorroborated anecdotes of Obi’s cost-cutting and financial wizardry while at the helm of the affairs of Anambra State. These stories, including fact-finding missions to local markets and bizarre consultations with mentally ill advisers, have become more and more questionable as Obi’s constant need to up the stakes has seen his claims and those of his supporters become ever more preposterous. Such is the purported extent of Obi’s frugality that meals…
Raila Odinga, Kenya’s ex-Prime Minister who made his fifth bid for the presidency this year, has lost his challenge of the election at the Supreme Court, removing the final legal obstacle in the way of Williams Ruto, the Deputy President whose emergence as President after a dramatic and drawn-out vote count was affirmed. Odinga, an establishment politician whose determined bid to become president has drawn comparisons with Nigeria’s Atiku Abubakar, rejected Ruto’s declared victory by the electoral body, alleging irregularities and massive fraud in a petition to the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the victory. His petition was, however, dismissed…
Against the backdrop of a war of words that ensued between Rivers Governor Nyesom Wike and embattled PDP National Chairman Senator Iyorchia Ayu, the former convened his governor allies in London for another round of meeting suspected to consolidate their break from the party after an uncompromising Ayu belittled them as “children”. The meeting, held on Friday, was attended by Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State and Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State, and is reported to be preparatory for another meeting with the Presidential candidate of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, who has intensified his outreach to the aggrieved…
Flagbearer of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, has been accused of possible cultism ties over a curious handshake he struck with Igbo rapper Phyno at a DC restaurant in the United States of America. The former Anambra governor who is yet to deny rumored alliance with IPOB, a proscribed terror group responsible for numerous extra-judicial killings in the eastern region of the country, unusually shook the rapper in what many have described as a “claw” – a greeting style purportedly exclusive to a violent cult group in the country, typically used by members to signal shared membership and ‘brotherhood’. The…
Despite its high-profile billing, it appears the London meeting between presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar and the Wike-led faction of the PDP may have done little to quell the fire raging in the party as its National Chairman, Sen. Iyorchia Ayu, has denied reports of his impending resignation in accordance with the reconciliation demand of the River Governor. Governor Wike has in the past few months trained the fire of his criticism on the candidate and the chairman over the conduct of the primary process that produced the former, alleging bias and collusion. To seize fire and return to the fold…
Governor of Benue State Samuel Ortom has received a stern rebuke from the Presidency over his allegation of the Federal Government’s purported complicity in Nigeria’s insecurity challenge. Ortom had said in a recent interview with the International Centre for Investigative Reporting, Nigeria, that some security men told him “the Federal Government gave them directive that they do not have to move against these Fulani men” in reference to the herders crisis in the middle belt region of the country. But in response, the Presidency via a statement authored by presidential media aide Garba Shehu, described Ortom’s claim as a “divisive…
APC’s Presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, led other prominent Nigerians in the celebration of respected Christian cleric, Bishop Hassan Mathew Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of the Sokoto Diocese who turned 70 on Wednesday. In a personal address to the cleric, the former Lagos governor described his life as “one of devotion and duty to God and humility”, adding that his sermon and contributions as a public intellectual in over four decades “have enriched the national discourse and highlighted the role of morality in the public space.” Tinubu went on to say that seminal articles authored by the celebrant are…
For Shaka Momodu, the editor of This Day and a columnist with the newspaper, column writing is about hurling insults, cheap abuse, curses, invectives, peddling gossip, trading in unverified rumor, hypocritical moralistic posturing and wallowing in the gutter of mudslinging. That the Editor of what is supposed to be a leading newspaper in the country can be allowed by his medium to write such vile stuff on its back page filled with bile, vitriol, unhidden malice, outright falsehood and wild generalizations shows how much media practice, just like virtually every aspect of the country’s social life has degenerated badly. Momodu…
In an attempt to pushback against his continuous association with the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), the tribal and violent secessionist group spreading terror in the eastern region of the country, Labour Party’s candidate Peter Obi has repeated a vow to govern the incredibly diverse country fairly and as a united nation. But a foray into his previous stint in public office as the governor of Anambra provides little evidence of either the candidate’s capacity or will to do this. As the elected leader of Anambra State between 2007 and 2014, Obi turned to divisive tactics that exacerbated social tensions…