PDP killed many industries in Lagos – Oshiomhole

The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Adams Oshiomhole, on Saturday urged Nigerians not to believe the promise of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to create massive jobs.

Oshiomhole gave the advice in Lagos while addressing the mammoth crowd at the party’s presidential campaign rally.

He said the promise was a calculated ploy by the opposition party to deceive Nigerians and get their votes.

The party chairman said the PDP had no good record of job creation in all its 16 years in power.

He said that the era of PDP marked the death of many industries in the country, especially in Lagos.

Oshiomhole said that it was a big irony that the PDP candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who supervised the economy at the time as Vice-President when many factories died was promising jobs.

The party chairman said the opposition party is clueless about job creation.

According to him, the APC has created many jobs in the last three years and would create more when re-elected.

“When you go to Oshodi and Isolo, remember the industries in Oshodi and Ikeja? Where are they now?

“Who supervised the obituaries of these industries? It is the PDP, and who was the Vice-President at that time, Atiku.

“How can you supervise the liquidation of industries and make promise to create new jobs?

“Jobs are not created by miracles; by investing in infrastructure, the present government has generated many jobs through construction and multiplier effects.

“The Next level means more jobs are coming for the people,” he said.

Oshiomhole said that the PDP Vice-Presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi, did not have the moral authority to speak on jobs.

He alleged that Obi deals in Made-in -China goods, exporting jobs, saying that was the reason he always quoted figures from China at any gathering.

Oshiomhole said the country did not fare well under the 16 years of PDP, which he described as an era characterised by looting and poor leadership.

He said the Buhari administration had done well to put the country on the right course in the last three and half years.

Oshiomhole said Buhari was a man of integrity, adding the anti-corruption fight and love for the masses had improved under him.

“President Buhari is a man of integrity. He is the only president that no British Prime Minister has called a thief.

“He is the only president that is widely acknowledged to be fighting corruption.

“This is the only president that the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury in London has described as an African leader who stands out to be counted on the side of the people.

“That is why I am proud and you are proud to be associated with what Buhari is doing and what he stands for, and why the Next level is about you,” he said.

He said the difference between the APC and PDP is that while the APC is about the people, PDP is about themselves.

Oshiomhole said while APC was spending N500 billion on the poor, the PDP was complaining the money was too much, as they were used to looting.

He said the promise by Atiku to give amnesty to treasury looters while leaving petty thieves who steal N10 or N20 should tell anyone that PDP is about class.

The party chairman said the APC is sure of victory on Feb. 16 and March 2, as it would defeat the PDP “mercilessly”.

He assured the international community that the party would not be involved in rigging or violence, as it had no record of doing that.

Oshiomhole said the APC has no reason to rig, as people believed in the party for progress.

He said Lagos is an example of a working state, which is so because it is under APC.

The Director-General of the Buhari Campaign Organisation and Minister of Transportation, Mr Rotimi Amaechi, said a vote for APC is a vote for infrastructure.

He said the delivery of Lagos-Abeokuta rail project and others in the country by the APC meant the party is for development.

The APC governorship candidate in the state, Mr Babajide Sanwo-olu, urged residents to vote right and for the APC.

He urged residents to come out en masse and vote for the party for the progress of the state.

The APC chairman in the state, Alhaji Tunde Balogun, praised the administration of Buhari, saying the state had benefited immensely in terms of projects in the last three and half years.

APC state governors, ministers, among others were part of the mammoth crowd of party faithful and residents at the rally.

- PM NEWS

Solskjaer speaks on Rashford, Mbappe comparisons

Manchester United interim manager, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, has spoken on the comparison between Marcus Rashford and Paris Saint-Germain’s Kylian Mbappe, ahead of their Champions League clash.

All eyes will be on the two forwards, when United welcome PSG to Old Trafford, for the first leg of their last-16 clash on Tuesday.

Rashford has been in red-hot form since Solskjaer replaced Jose Mourinho in December, scoring six goals in 10 appearances in all competitions.

And Solskjaer believes Rashford is United’s answer to PSG’s 20-year-old World Cup winner Mbappe.

“Marcus is going to be a top-quality player. I love working with him. I am sure PSG will look at Marcus the way we look at Mbappe – he’s one of the main threats.

“Mbappe had a fantastic rise to stardom and he’s got a fantastic smile about him. A great enthusiasm. And there will understandably be comparisons.

“I have seen Mbappe live once and Marcus every single day. Strikers don’t really dominate football but the pair of them will have a massive impression on football for the next 10 years. They will really light it up,” Solskjaer told reporters after Saturday’s 3-0 Premier League win at Fulham.

- DAILY POST 

The Grammy Awards’ Racist Aversion to Hip-Hop

 The Grammy Awards still can’t figure out this hip-hop thing.

The New York Times reported earlier this week that show producer Ken Ehrlich “said that this year he offered performance slots on the show to Drake, Lamar and Childish Gambino…but they all declined. Representatives of those three artists declined to comment on whether they would attend the show.”

Ehrlich also offered a take on the relations between music’s biggest rappers and the industry’s most venerated awards show.

“The fact of the matter is, we continue to have a problem in the hip-hop world,” Ehrlich stated to the Times. “When they don’t take home the big prize, the regard of the academy, and what the Grammys represent, continues to be less meaningful to the hip-hop community, which is sad.”

Hip-hop and the Grammys have a famously awkward history. Although Run-D.M.C. was nominated for a Grammy in 1987 (Best R&B Performance By a Duo or Group), the Best Rap Album Grammy debuted in 1989—with DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince winning the award—but famous rappers boycotted the show when it was announced that the Best Rap Performance category wouldn’t be a part of the telecast. MTV held an anti-Grammy after-party hosted by Yo! MTV Raps at L.A.’s Cat & Fiddle pub that wound up being quite the TV event if you were a rap fan—especially one who never got what was so great about “Music’s Biggest Night” in the first place.

“We chose to boycott,” The Fresh Prince explained back then. “You go to school for 12 years, they give you your diploma, and they deny you that walk down the aisle.” Kool Moe Dee controversially chose not to support the boycott—admonishing the image some rappers portrayed as the reason the Grammys were afraid to put them on. “We don’t all wear gold and sneakers and I don’t like the image that’s been created,” Moe Dee told David Nathan of Black Radio Exclusive after the boycott. “Like when LL Cool J grabbed himself at the American Music Awards when he was giving an award to Al B. Sure. That’s the kind of negative image all rappers have and I want to change that.”

Moe Dee would take the Grammy for Best Rap Performance in 1990. “The irony was, we were boycotting at a time that they were finally acknowledging us,” he said. “A much better strategy—and a much bigger hip-hop move—would have been for everybody to go to the Grammys and make our case in that space where the world was watching.”

 By 1989, Kool Moe Dee was one of hip-hop’s most venerated elders—the rare early rap star from the Enjoy and Sugarhill Records days who’d thrived in the higher-profile, post-Run-D.M.C., Yo! MTV Raps landscape of the late 1980s. He would take the Grammy podium to present the award for Best Male R&B Vocal and offered an impromptu verse—that included a dig at then-rival Cool J, who was originally supposed to present the award:

“On the behalf of all M.C.s / My co-workers and fellow nominees / Jazzy Jeff, J.J. Fad, Salt-N-Pepa and the boy who’s bad / We personify power and a drug-free mind / And we express ourselves through rhythm and rhyme / So I think it’s time that the whole world knows / Rap is here to stay—drummer, let’s go!”

When the Los Angeles Times asked The Fresh Prince (aka Will Smith) how he felt about Moe Dee’s appearance at the show, he offered no condemnation: “Everybody to their own opinion.”

That 1989 boycott was 30 years ago this year and it feels like hip-hop still sits at the pop culture kids’ table. It’s been 15 years since OutKast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below won Album of the Year and 20 years since Lauryn Hill took that same honor for The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. In the more specified categories, the list of 1990s Best Rap Album and Best Rap Song category winners are an odd mix of artists—evidence of how only certain artists made significant headway with pop audiences (LL Cool J, Coolio, Naughty By Nature) and the 2000s are dominated by Kanye West and Eminem. The Fugees, Eminem, Nelly, Missy Elliott and Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Drake and Macklemore have all been nominated for Album of the Year but didn’t win the award. 

Even the two hip-hop albums that have won Album of the Year—Speakerboxxx/The Love Below and The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill—both featured very popular singles that weren’t “rap” songs by any means in “Doo Wop (That Thing)” and “Hey Ya,” respectively. These albums were popular hip-hop albums—but they were also musically-varied projects that could easily find airplay in pop, rock and R&B circles and with voters for whom that music is more immediate and relatable. It indicates that hip-hop has to be tempered with something that voters and audiences find more “respectable” before it can be put on an elevated tier. 

2018 should have been the heralding of a shift at the Grammys. Amongst the Album of the Year nominees, there were three hip-hop-leaning acts in Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar and Childish Gambino (albeit the latter was nominated for his acclaimed funk-soul album Awaken, My Love!). For the optimistic, it seemed to convey that the Grammy generation gap was closing as hip-hop had become more centered and there was now an increase in older voters were actively into this music. But when Bruno Mars won took home Album of the Year, it felt like more of the same ol’, same ol’, as any big pop star was likely to eclipse whichever or however many rap faves landed in the major categories. With his eight nods for his acclaimed album 4:44, Jay-Z was last year’s most-nominated artist, but went home empty-handed. The folly of Kendrick’s DAMN loss to Bruno Mars was amplified when Lamar was awarded the Pulitzer in April; and alongside such high-profile whiffs as Beyoncé’s 2017 Lemonade loss and their lengthy history of awarding the most middle-of-the-road material over the sound of the times, it’s no question why so many hip-hop and R&B artists have decided to be done with the Grammys.  

When considered with outgoing chief executive of the Recording Academy Neil Portnow’s “step up” comments after last year’s show—in which only female artists won an award on-air—the Grammys have looked increasingly out of step with the times and, even when viewed through a more historical lens, the show has always been an inadequate showcase of where even the most mainstream popular music is going or has gone in any given year. 

Hip-hop doesn’t need the Grammys—the music, the industry and the culture have thrived and will continue to do so with that particular awards show only having peripheral interest from the audience. But venerated institutions hold a wider cultural sway that can be effectively used to marginalize great art when such institutions aren’t held accountable for insufficient representation. Amazing women like Janelle Monae and H.E.R. are nominated for major awards this year; hip-hop-centric projects like Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy, the Black Panther soundtrack and Drake’s Scorpion are up for Album of the Year, and Kendrick Lamar and Drake are the most-nominated artists. But the Grammys has a long way to go to make anyone believe they really “get it” when it comes to hip-hop and R&B. And they need to figure it out soon, before it becomes cooler to skip the Grammys than it is to be seen there.

- THE DAILY BEAST

Anambra tanker explosion: Death toll hits seven

The Police Command in Anambra has confirmed seven dead, and scores of injured in the petrol explosion that happened at about 10pm on Saturday night in Amawbia near Awka, the capital city of Anambra State.

DAILY POST reports that the fire disaster emanated from a petrol tanker that was negotiating the Amawbia junction before it fell and exploded into fire, wile the petroleum product it was conveying flowed freely through a drainage channel, spreading the fire further.

The Anambra State Police Public Relations Officer, PPRO, SP Haruna
Mohammed, told DAILY POST on Sunday Morning that so far, a total number of seven corpses have been certified dead at various hospitals by medical doctors while the only surviving victim was referred to the Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching hospital Nnewi and was admitted at the intensive care unit of the hospital.

He said, “Out of the seven Corpses confirmed dead, three are
deposited at Amaku General Hospital Morgue, two at Regina Caeli Hospital and another two at Piston Hospital Morgue for postmortem examination.”

Meanwhile, as at Sunday morning, the area was besieged by sympathisers and victims’ families, most of which came to identify their charred vehicles.

A tricycle operator, Mr. Sunday Ugwu said, “I was just driving through this road when the fire started yesterday night, so when I found out I could not escape with my keke, I parked it and ran away.

Shop owners, whose shop building including their wares were razed were also seen at the site on Sunday morning crying profusely.

- DAILY POST 

Comedian, Seyi Law separates from wife of 8 years

Popular Comedian, Seyi Law has announced separation from his wife of eight years, Stacy due to irreconcilable differences.

Seyi Law announced the dissolution of his eight years marriage with Stacy, which has produced a child, on his Instagram page early Sunday.

He said the decision was taken due to irreconcilable differences, saying that the child, Tiwaloluwa is safe and good.

Seyi Law praised his ex-wife for her beautiful and good heart, but said it was sad that they had to part ways.

“Due to irreconcilable differences would have been enough to announce this, but the kind and beautiful heart of my ex-wife must be stated. She is one of the best women I have ever known.

“It is however sad, that I announce that my wife and I have decided to path ways for good. We will appreciate your love and support at this time. God bless you. Tiwaloluwa is safe and good,” he said on his Instagram post.

Seyi Law had given hint of what to come when he posted on Saturday that he found so much joy in his daughter which was the reason his pain did not matter.

“I find so much joy with Tiwaloluwa Oluwademiladeola Chidera Aviella. You are the reason my pain don’t matter. Too many wishes in my life right. Major announcement later tonight. Don’t be shocked. It is what it is. I am coming,” he had said on Saturday before he dropped the bombshell around 12:25am on Sunday.

- PM NEWS

Eight suspects in EFCC net over online fraud

Operatives of the Ibadan Zonal Office of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, have arrested eight suspected internet fraudsters at the Elebu-Oja area of Ibadan, Oyo State.

A statement from the EFCC said the suspects include: Ojo Ayobami, Dayo Adedokun, Ojo Ayotunde, Ibidapo Ileriayo, Ibidapo Kolade, Adeniyi Gbenga, Aluko Idowu and Adeusi Olatunji.

They were rounded up on February 8, 2019 following action on a series of intelligence reports. They are alleged to be involved in fraudulent activities ranging from love scam and other forms of internet fraud, through which they obtain money from unsuspecting victims.

Three different models of exotic cars, laptop computers, telephones, international passports and several incriminating documents were recovered from them.

They will soon be charged to court.

-PM NEWS

Algerian President Bouteflika, 81 years old, seeks re-election

Algeria’s ruling party FLN has picked President Abdelaziz Bouteflika as its candidate for the April 18 presidential election, party leader Moad Bouchareb said on Saturday.

Bouteflika, 81, who has been in office since 1999 but has been seen in public only rarely since suffering a stroke in 2013 that confined him to a wheelchair, is likely to win a fifth term as the Algerian opposition remains weak and fragmented.

He will still need to make a formal announcement, probably in a letter that will be read on his behalf, before March 3.

“We at the FLN we have decided to pick Bouteflika as our candidate for the April presidential election. Let’s be ready for the campaign,” Bouchareb told about 2,000 supporters at a sports stadium in Algiers.

“We have chosen him because we need continuity and stability,” he added.

Bouteflika’s poor health had led to months of uncertainty about whether he would stand for election again.

His re-election would offer short-term stability for the elite of the FLN, the army and business tycoons, and postpone a potentially controversial succession.

But the president will need to find a way to connect with the North African country’s young population, almost 70 percent of which is aged under 30.

The OPEC oil producer is a key gas supplier to Europe and a U.S. ally in the fight against terror in the Sahel region.

Bouteflika is part of a thinning elite of the veterans who won independence from France in the 1954-62 war and have run Algeria ever since.

His last meeting with a senior foreign official was during a visit by German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sept. 17. An earlier meeting with Merkel and a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte were both cancelled.

Algeria avoided the major political upheaval seen in many other Arab states in the past decade but has experienced some protests and strikes. Unemployment remains high, especially among young people, many of whom have left the country to seek better wages and living conditions.

The economy has improved over the past year as oil and gas revenues have picked up, allowing authorities to ease austerity measures imposed when they halved between 2014 and 2017.

Oil and gas earnings account for 60 percent of the budget and 94 percent of export revenues. But Algeria has around $80 billion of reserves and almost no foreign debts.

Bouteflika remains popular with many Algerians, who credit him with ending the country’s long civil war by offering former Islamist fighters amnesty.

Supporters say his mind remains sharp, even though he needs a microphone to speak. The opposition says he is not fit to run again and several candidates, including a retired general, have said they will challenge Bouteflika.

The government has said it wants to diversify the economy away from oil and gas, but there has been resistance from those within the ruling elite to opening up to foreign investment.

That has left the economy dominated by the state and firms run by business tycoons.

- PM NEWS