POLITICS
Naja’atu Mohammed Sacked Over Incompetence – APC PCC
The All Progressives Congress (APC) Asiwaju/Shettima Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) on Tuesday said Naja’atu Mohammed, its former Head of Civil Society Organisations Directorate, was sacked due to incompetence and for leaking vital information.
Mahmud Jega, Adviser Public Affairs Tinubu Media Office, said this in a statement in Abuja.
Jega described Mohammed’s resignation as hasty and preemptive after the campaign council had discovered her leakage of sensitive information to opposition political parties.
He charged APC supporters to ignore the antics of political jobbers like Mohammed and concentrate on delivering the Tinubu-Shettima presidential ticket in the coming presidential election.
Newsmen report that Muhammed who claimed to have resigned from her position on Monday also alleged that Tinubu is suffering from dementia.
“The Asiwaju/Shettima Presidential Campaign Council received with amusement the hasty resignation of Hajiya Naja’atu Mohammed from her position as Director of Civil Society Organisations.
“This was just before she was sacked for incompetence, quarrelsomeness and after being uncovered to be a mole planted in the winning campaign council to leak sensitive information to our desperate opponents,”Jega said.
Jega said Mohammed had succeeded in deceiving the gullible public by claiming that she resigned, when her sack letter had arrived at her desk.
He added that her desperate, fact-free, machination-filled and imaginary utterances since her sack from the PCC had proved beyond doubt that she was unfit to serve in the first place, until it was discovered that she was actually a mole.
“Not being a medical doctor but one whose profession in the last three decades was as a political jobber and expert name dropper.
“She nevertheless issued a pseudo-medical report on our presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, after a brief meeting in London.
“Even the association of native doctors would sack her for quackery and for reaching a medical conclusion without any test,”Jega said.
He added that in contrast to Mohammed’s claim; Tinubu had been running the most punishing campaign schedule than any of the presidential candidates.
According to Jega, Tinubu’s stamina had taken him to many parts of the country; with an almost non-stop schedule of political rallies, town hall meetings with business and cultural stakeholders.
On her claim that Tinubu has no plan for the north, Jega said “Hajiya Naja’atu Mohammed claimed that when she asked Asiwaju what plans he had for the North, he answered that he had none, this is strange and questions the integrity of the woman and her story.”
He said that Tinubu had unfolded an action plan for the whole country, in which problems bedeviling the North got a very comprehensive attention.
The APC PCC Adviser Public Affairs recalled that Tinubu also attended the Arewa Summit in 2022 where he unfolded and elaborated on his action plan and programs.
“As conclusive proof of her unstable and unreliable character. Naja’atu said in her pre-emptive resignation letter that she was quitting party politics as the political parties have no ideological differences and her values and beliefs no longer align with party politics.
“Within a day, pictures surfaced in the media showing her meeting with Alhaji Atiku Abubakar,the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate and declaring her support for him,” he said.
He added that Nigerians must be wondering what kind of values and beliefs she has apart from opportunism, selfishness and greed.
“We were least surprised about her dramatic exit, coming after she went on television to disparage our party and President Muhammadu Buhari, only a mole could behave in such a manner.
“We urge our supporters across the country to ignore the antics of this political soldier of fortune and concentrate on the job of delivering the Tinubu/Shettima ticket at the polls in barely a month from now,” Jega said. (NAN)
POLITICS
INEC Staff Welfare Association Warns Members Against Manipulating Election Results
The Abia Chapter of the INEC Staff Welfare Association (ISWA) has warned its members to uphold the integrity of the commission and guard against the culture of manipulating election results.
The Abia Chairman of the association, Mr Collins Eze, gave the advice at the group’s general meeting and end-of-year party in Umuahia.
Speaking in an interview with newsmen on the sideline of the ceremony, Eze said that the staff members were adequately aware of their enormous responsibility and should ensure free, fair and credible elections.
He said: “We have also told our colleagues that anywhere they find themselves they should make sure that they do the needful by ensuring transparency in the conduct of elections.
“We have always told them not to allow anybody to induce them with money to manipulate election results.
“I’m happy that they have been building the capacity of our colleagues on election processes.
“So, in the coming years, we won’t have any problem in ensuring free, fair and peaceful elections.”
He said that the end-of-year party was special as it afforded them the opportunity “to wine and dine together as well as thank God for sustaining them in 2024”.
Eze said that his leadership had introduced various means of assisting members in dire financial needs by providing platforms to solicit suppory for them.
He expressed gratitude to members for their support and cooperation, describing them as the “secret behind the success of this administration”.
He said that 34 of at least 350 staff members of the commission in the state retired from service in 2024.
According to him, the development has placed a huge financial burden on the association, in terms of their welfare and entitlement as members.
Report says that each member received a carton of tomato paste as Christmas gift from the association. (NAN)
POLITICS
Be Thankful APC Didn’t Probe Your Administrations, Okechukwu Tells PDP
A chieftain of All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Osita Okechukwu, has told the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to be thankful to God that its 16-year administration was not probed by the successive APC-led governments.Okechukwu stated this on Tuesday in Abuja, while reacting to a statement by PDP congratulating Ghanaians for the conduct of free, fair and transparent general elections.
Report says that PDP had, in a statement, said that the verdict of the people of Ghana in the presidential election was a signal to the APC that its days were numbered. The party’s National Publicity Secretary, Debo Ologunagba, had said in the statement that the power of the people in Nigeria, just like in Ghana, would ‘surely prevail and end the APC’s oppressive rule’.This, he said, would “return Nigeria to the path of good governance, security, political stability and economic prosperity on the platform of the PDP in 2027.”However, in his reactions to Ologunagba’s statement, Okechukwu said that the PDP clan should thank God that former President Muhammadu Buhari and President Bola Tinubu, out of sheer statesmanship, had refused to probe ‘the 16 locus years of PDP administrations’.Okechukwu, a former Director-General of Voice of Nigeria (VON), described the 16 years of PDP administrations as ones full of squandering and lack of plan.He said that Nigeria had yet to recover from the humongous culture of impunity and trust deficit planted by PDP on the Nigerian soil.Okechukwu said corruption was among the culture of impunity, saying it governed the privatisation of Nigeria’s electricity value chain, a key element in the country’s industrialisation drive.“Another is the blatant rigging of the 2007 general elections which the foremost beneficiary, President Umaru Yar’Adua, out of good conscience and noble magnanimity, publicly acknowledged the malfeasance which characterised his victory,” he said.Okechukwu also mentioned what he called conscienceless sale of the legislative and ministerial quarters, the annual rentage of which, he said, was bleeding the country’s treasury.“Another one is the neglect of $23 billion Greenfield Refinery, which could have saved over $70 billion expended on importation of refined petroleum products and which simulated the economic hardship of today,” he said.On why, for nine years, the APC administration could not fix those challenges, he recalled the efforts made by the Buhari administration to reopen talks on the Greenfield Refinery which, according to him, the Chinese regrettably rebuffed.The former VON director-general said that Nigerians were not in a hurry to forget the deliberate breach of the rotational convention of president from the north to the south.He said that the country could not also forget the utter disregard for Section 7 of the PDP’s constitution which expressly mandated zoning.Okechukwu advised the PDP not to insult the sensibilities of Nigerians by assuming that citizens would easily forget how they were put in the harms way.He said that PDP should thank God that Buhari and Tinubu did not want to probe them, adding “that’s why Nigerians cannot decipher the difference between the two political parties.” (NAN)POLITICS
LG Administration Central to Democracy in Nigeria -Nwoko
Sen. Ned Nwoko (PDP-Delta) says that Local Government Administration is central to democracy in Nigeria as it ensures grassroots governance and service delivery at the local level.This is contained in a statement signed by Dr Michael Nwoko, the Chief of Staff to the lawmaker in Abuja on Monday.Nwoko said this on the occasion of the presentation of an award “Icon of Hope” to him by the Association of Local Government Vice Chairmen of Nigeria (ALGOVC).
He was represented by his Chief of Staff. He said that the importance of local government administration in the country could not be overemphasised, as it was the bedrock of democracy.According to him, local governments in Nigeria play key roles in the country’s democracy by promoting participatory democracy, providing services, and representing citizens.“Local Governments help determine local needs and how to meet them. They also act as a link between the centre, state, and local people.“They are created to decentralise power and bring the government closer to the people. They perform both mandatory and concurrent functions.“It is in view of this that I took it upon myself to enhance the viability of local governments through the Paris and London club loan refunds,”he said.Dr Folashade Olabanji-Oba, ALGOVC National Chairman, while presenting the award at its 7th Annual National Conference, said the award was in recognition of the lawmaker’s significant contributions to strengthening local government administration.She highlighted Nwoko’s critical role in ensuring the Paris and London Club loan refunds, a financial breakthrough she said enhanced the capacity of local governments nationwide.(NAN)