2015 General Polls: APC is indivisible – Tinubu

By OLASUNKANMI AKONI
As the All Progressives Congress, APC, Lagos State chapter, began the process for the 2015 general elections, the  national leader of the party and former Governor of the state, Bola Tinubu, has declared that the party is indivisible, despite all efforts from different quarters to divide the party. He however, assured all members and intending members that the party would follow due process to the letter in the selection of candidates for various offices.
Tinubu, who gave the assurance while addressing members at a stakeholders’ meeting at the weekend, held at the state Secretariat of APC,  in Ikeja, urged all prospective and old members to register in accordance with the party’s constitution, saying that only registered members would get the party’s identity cards and be recognized as such.

2, 700 anti-aircraft bombs intercepted in Rivers

Rivers State Commissioner of Police, Mr. Joseph Mbu

The vessel identified as MV Iron Trader which was intercepted by the State Security Service on Thursday in Port Harcourt, was carrying 2,700 anti-aircraft and anti-tank bombs, Saturday PUNCH has learnt.

Security sources told our correspondent in Abuja on Friday that the bombs were concealed in a 20-foot container on the ship.

The container is being guarded by a combined team of SSS operatives, soldiers and policemen.

It was learnt that the cargo which originated from Turkey was brought into the country under the guise that they were building rods.

Nigeria’s oil sector was developed with money from the North –Ango Abdullahi

Prof. Ango Abdullahi

In this interview with JOHN ALECHENU, the spokesperson for the Northern Elders Forum, Professor Ango Abdullahi, speaks about the Almajiri phenomenon, Boko Haram insurgency, and the 2015 elections among other issues

The way you talk about the North, some people tend to see you as someone who hates the rest of the country…

This is certainly an unfair assessment. If you look at my pedigree and my background, I come from Zaria; I went to a mixed school. Virtually all my classmates in elementary school and senior primary school came from the southern part of the country. They were non-Hausa, non-Fulani and we remained together, we went to school and finished together and this continued throughout to my secondary education in Barewa College. And you know, Barewa College was a mixture of people from all the Northern provinces and a few from the southern part of the country. I went to the Nigerian College of Arts, Sciences and Technology, Zaria. Nigerian College as the name implies, brings in all Nigerians irrespective of tribe and geographical location. I did not study at the Ahmadu Bello University, I went to the University College, Ibadan. The North in Ibadan was a minority. When I finished, I worked in an institution that was not only national but international, the Ahmadu Bello University, where I worked throughout my academic career. There is no way anyone can look at my background and say I dislike a Nigerian based on his tribe, or based on his religion, or where he comes from.

My present state of mind has to do with what we have suffered coming from where you least expect. If you look at the present position of the Northern Elders Forum, it was given birth to by the attitude of our brothers and sisters who, either within the North or from outside the North, seem to have acquired some virus of either dislike-I don’t want to use the word -hatred for a section of the country or a particular group within a section of the country and this is what is happening to us in this country. Unless we want to be dishonest about it, this is why my recent position is that yes, if you don’t think that Nigerians deserve peace in terms of co-existence and you think that some other way is to be employed, so be it. What about those people who talk in the same tone like I talk? Why are they not being accused of being sectional? All this recent turmoil about North and South was created by the South, not by the North. The position we have taken has nothing to do with it. Some of us have done far more for the unity of Nigeria than many who are professing to be nationalists now.

Gunmen kill family of seven in Kaduna

Kaduna State Governor, Mukhtar Yero

Gunmen suspected to be Fulani herdsmen in a midnight raid on Thursday wiped out a family of seven at Manyi Akuru village, a suburb of Manchok town in Kaura Local Government Area of Kaduna State.

Manchok, a town about 200km south of Kaduna, the capital city of Kaduna State, has  witnessed some communal clashes in recent times.

The suspected Fulani herdsmen reportedly stormed Manchok around midnight.

Angry youths of Manchok later mobilised and attacked a Fulani settlement close to the town. But a detachment of army stationed around the area averted a reprisal.

Stakeholders caution Lagos legislature over Land Bill

The Lagos State House of Assembly has been advised by various stakeholders in the state to apply caution over its new Land Bill, describing the proposed law as sensitive.

Speaking at a public hearing on the “Bill for a law to prohibit forceful entry and occupation on landed properties, violent and fraudulent conducts in Lagos State and for connected purposes” at the House of Assembly complex, most of the contributors pointed out the need to rework the 17-section bill.

In his submission, the Dean, Faculty of Law, University Of Lagos, Professor I.O. Smith, analysed the bill section- by-section and alerted the House of Assembly to some contradictions in the bill and its implication rightful land owners.

Smith called for an in-road into an immediate recourse anyone whose property has been wrongfully possessed.

He called for the creation of a remedy clause under the proposed law; consideration for the third party and the need for a taskforce on investigation of land matters.

Falana, Aturu differ on INEC’s law against defection

Mr. Femi Falana

Two  prominent lawyers have expressed divergent views on a recent proposal by the Independent National Electoral Commission which seeks a law against frivolous defection by politicians.

INEC’s National Commissioner in charge of Election Party Monitoring, Hajiya Amina Zakari, had made the comment on Tuesday at the opening of the National Stakeholders’ Forum on Electoral Reforms in Abuja.

She said the law would also empower INEC to enforce internal democracy in the nomination and substitution of candidates for election by political parties.

Reacting to INEC’s position, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mr. Femi Falana, told Saturday PUNCH that INEC’s intention was in order.

 In Britain, hunger hurts while in Africa, hunger kills - but we single mums try to do our best

Food poverty campaigner, single mum and blogger Jack Monroe visits Tanzania and finds some surprising similarities with her own situation

Here To Help: Jack in Tanzania with Irene and daughter

Mora McLagan/Oxfam UK

She is 24 years old, a single mother to a two-year-old girl. She lost her job in 2012 and has moved house at least four times since. Unable to find work, she is living in a friend’s bedroom in a shared house, borrowing food from neighbours.
Her name is Irene and she lives in Tanzania but her story feels immediately familiar to me.
I’m a British single mum aged 25 with a three-year-old son.
I was forced to give up my job in the UK fire service because I couldn’t make my childcare fit around the unpredictable hours. I fell into severe poverty.
I have also borrowed food from friends and food banks. I’ve moved house five times since I become unemployed and my son has moved eight times in his short life.

A blog I kept about my experiences is being made into a book called A Girl Called Jack, and because of that, Oxfam invited me to visit Tanzania.