I know politicians who have suddenly turned billionaires – Amaechi

A former Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, has stated that Nigeria is a country without consequences, adding that citizens and voters have failed to hold politicians and leaders accountable for their actions and policies.

Amaechi said that he knows politicians who have suddenly turned billionaires few months after taking up political positions.

Amaechi who is also a former governor of Rivers State stated this during a panel session at the fifth edition of The Nigeria Symposium For Young and Emerging Leaders held in Lagos on Friday.

Speaking on ineffective policies and extreme poverty, Amaechi explained that the country’s wealth has been in the pocket of an influential few and called for politicians to invest in infrastructure in order to create jobs and reduce crime.

“I know politicians who have suddenly become billionaires, and this is the money that should have been used to build roads and provide amenities that could have been used to improve the lives of citizens. Our politicians have to be clear on how they intend to lift people out of poverty,” he said.

Also commenting on citizen participation, a former presidential candidate, KOWA, Professor Remi Shonaiya, added,“We have to educate ourselves in order to become more active, and we have to begin to consider the greater good in our decisions.

“Most of us don’t care about what is happening in the House of Assembly, we are much more concerned about ourselves. The focus has to be on the people, not the government. But we as the people also have to make sure that we hold our leaders accountable to us. There’s too much personal style in the way we practice politics in the country,” said Professor Shonaiya.

- PM NEWS

New minimum wage: Organized labour threatens FG over lack of commitment to paying N30,000

Organised labour has raised doubts over federal government’s commitment to the implementation of the new N30,000 minimum wage.

President of Trade Union Congress, TUC, Quadri Olaleye, threatened that organised labour may be forced to take industrial action over the delay in the payment of the new minimum wage.

Speaking to reporters in Lagos yesterday, Olaleye said workers had thought that consequential adjustment on the minimum wage would be negotiated openly.

“From the look of things, it appears the Federal Government is not committed to implementing the new minimum wage arrangement going by the way its representatives in the committee, set up to negotiate the consequential adjustment arising from the new minimum wage, are handling the negotiation,” Olaleye said.

He also said that the organised labour has been considerate by lowering its initial demand for increasing the salaries of officers on Grade Level (GL) 07 to 17 by 66.66% as the rate at which the minimum wage was increased but the FG side is only offering 9.5% for GL 07 to 14 officers and 5% for those on GL 15 to 17.

He said: “As it stands now, we may be forced to go to the trenches.

“We sincerely hope that the government will act fast and direct its representatives to return to the negotiation table with a more realistic mandate that will be beneficial to workers who have had to wait for almost a decade to get something meaningful added to their emoluments.”

- DAILY POST

Nigeria will be fully Islamized in few years, Igbo can’t be president – Adolphus Wabara

Former Senate President and member of the Board of Trustees, BoT, of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Senator Adolphus Wabara, has said that in few years, Nigeria will be Fulanized.

According to the Abia-born politician, Fulanization of Nigeria is an agenda that must be accomplished and for this reason, the South East should perish the hope of taking over from President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023.

Wabara noted that Buhari will not hand over to anyone who will not continue the project of making Nigeria a full Muslim state, adding that the signs are already manifestating.

“I believe what is happening is an agenda, it’s just that some of us, we are media friendly, but we don’t have easy access to the media to cry out every of your thought or whatever you say and we say things like that, sometimes the journalist will not take them seriously except if it comes from one with the stature of Obasanjo that you just mentioned,” he was quoted by Sun.

The former Senate President added that Nigeria may not survive the next 20 to 30 years, adding that if it does, it must have become a 100 per cent Muslim state.

He added, “I have always been of that opinion anytime I had the opportunity of talking to the press on that particular topic. I have read how Turkey became a Muslim state, 100 per cent, so to speak Muslim state and those signs are manifesting in my great and blessed country called Nigeria.

“I foresee this country as it is today if it survives another 20, 30 years Nigeria will be a mono-religious state, a Muslim state, then Nigeria would have been Islamized and not only being Islamized because if you talk of Islam, you don’t even know where you belong and I will rather say Nigeria would have been Fulanised because even within among the Muslims they are also confused.

“You see many Muslims who will not support what the Fulani’s are doing to us today, so if you talk of Islamization they will disagree with you, so what we are getting is Fulanisation of Nigeria because those who want to Fulanize Nigeria are indeed not true Muslims, they are nomadic Muslims who do not even believe in Islamic teachings neither do they believe in Western education, no wonder President Goodluck Jonathan attempted to bring education, nomadic education to them and what happened, it failed and it has failed till today because they are not interested in any form of education except their cattle, that is what they believe in.

“But the true Muslims of the North believe in Islam and they believe in peaceful co-existence between other religions in the country, but these Fulani people, they are basically not even Nigerians, they are mainly from Mali, Mauritania, etc, so they are territorial, no wonder they are talking of moving their cattle from one end to another and in the process they will Fulanize whatever territory they are.

“So, I foresee and I want to be quoted that the way we are going, if we don’t find a solution to our problems, particularly security-wise Nigeria will become Fulanized in the next couple of years and that is why I deeply regret and I hope anyway that my party, the PDP and specifically Atiku Abubakar will thrive in the tribunal. This is because Nigerians are looking forward to his doctrine of restructuring the country that is the only way we can save Nigeria from Fulanisation.

“The answer is no, if you want a sincere answer from me. You cannot be talking of the Fulanisation of Nigeria and you are thinking of an Igbo president coming in between 2023 for eight years, no. It is a project, Fulanisation of Nigeria is a project and it cannot be interrupted, I hear somebody from the Southwest is hoping to take over in 2023, it doesn’t matter whether he is a Muslim, but the truth of the matter is that he is not a nomadic Fulani, so there is no way power can shift to the South in 2023 and we the Igbo do not have what it takes to fight for it.

“As at today’s Nigeria, we don’t have what it takes to fight for it, where are we? Is it in the security apparatus of the nation? Where is the Igbo man, anything we have achieved or have been achieving is all personal efforts and in some cases community efforts.

“You hear of people stealing billions of naira, how many Igbo people have been mentioned? This is because you have to be where the money is before you can steal it.

“And this money they are using to Fulanize us, it is this money that you use to conduct an election and you know what happens with the election. So, we are not there unless you want to deceive yourself, we will not be there in 2023, mark my word.”

- DAILY POST

Trump back in ‘shithole’ controversy

U.S. President Donald Trump has reignited the infamy of his reference to some countries as ‘shithole’, as he descended on a a group of mostly American-born Democratic congresswomen to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” 

His comment via three tweets on Sunday was instantly condemned by Democrats as racist.

“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe… viciously telling the people of the United States… how our government is to be run,” Trump said in a series of three comments on Twitter.

While he did not mention names, Trump appeared to be referring to first-year Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan – a group known as “the squad” that has been very critical of Trump and also of the current Democratic leadership of the House.

Only Omar, whose family left Somalia as refugees and arrived in Minneapolis in 1997, was born outside the United States.

“Mr. President, the country I ‘come from,’ and the country we all swear to, is the United States,” Ocasio-Cortez, like Trump a native of New York City, responded on Twitter. 

“You are angry because you can’t conceive of an America that includes us. You rely on a frightened America for your plunder.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, has feuded with the group in an increasingly bitter intra-party fight, but came to their defence Sunday along with other Democratic colleagues.

She called Trump’s comments “xenophobic.”

“When @realDonaldTrump tells four American Congresswomen to go back to their countries, he reaffirms his plan to ‘Make America Great Again’ has always been about making America white again,” she said on Twitter.

“Do I fit into the President’s category?” U.S. Senator Dick Durbin on Illinois, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” mentioning his family’s Lithuanian heritage.

“Thanks goodness,” he said of Omar’s journey from refugee to one of only two Muslim women elected to Congress, along with Tlaib, a native of Detroit. 

“That is what America holds as a dream. The president should not diminish it.”

In January 2018, Trump had angered many people overs his description of Haiti, El Salvador and African countries as shithole countries. 

- PM NEWS

Samson Siasia’s mum kidnapped again

Beauty Ogere Siasia, the 76 year-old mother of former Super Eagles striker and Coach, Samson Siasia has been kidnapped again, the second time in four years.

Multiple sources including The Nation reported that the woman was taken away by unidentified armed men, on Monday morning at about 2 am.

One report said she was taken away from her home in Andoni community in Sagbama Local Government of Bayelsa state.

When she was kidnapped in November 2015, she was released 12 days after.

- PM NEWS

47,200 IDPs now in Cross River – SEMA

Cross River State is hosting 47,200 persons displaced by crisis and persistent flood, according to Mr Princewill Ayim, Acting Director-General of the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA).

Ayim said on Sunday in Calabar, that the figure was far above the 32,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), the state hosted in 2018.

He attributed the rise in the number of IDPs to the incessant communal clashes across the state, which had rendered thousands of residents homeless.

He said that the heavy rains witnessed in the state had also resulted into massive flooding which displaced many families from their ancestral homes.

Ayim listed local governments with the IDPs to include Boki, Biase, Yala, Odukpani, Obubra, Bakassi and Obanliku.

He said that IDPs from Odukpani, Biase, Obubra and Yala Local Governments were displaced from their homes as a result of the lingering feud between communities in Akwa Ibom State and their neighbours, Ebonyi.

“Some of the clashes have lasted for years and have impacted negatively on the economy and welfare of the people,” he said, adding that the state government had done a lot to end the violence, but without success.

“Currently, we have invited the National Boundary Commission to the affected areas. The commission has been holding peace meetings with the governments of Ebonyi and Akwa Ibom toward finding a lasting solution to the clashes,” he said.

He said that government had been preaching peace and urging those living in the disputed areas to treat their neighbours as brothers and sisters, and regretted that people in same local government were fighting and killing over land.

Ayim urged traditional rulers in affected communities to take precautionary measures by calling their subjects to order, especially during the rainy season, so as to avert future occurrence of communal clashes

- PM NEWS

Suicide: UNIBEN student jumps from 2-storey building

A yet-to-be identified final year student student of the University of Benin, UNIBEN, has reportedly committed suicide by jumping down from the 2nd floor of a hostel building.

The incident occurred Sunday evening at the Faculty of Arts.

The deceased male student was said to be a student of the Department of Actuarial Science, Faculty of Management Sciences.

As at the time of filing this report, it was not clear if the deceased left a suicide note.

It was, however, gathered that the victim who was supposed to have graduated before now, had a spill over.


Efforts to get confirmation from the Public Relations Officer of the University, Mr. Michael Osasuyi, failed, as calls made to his mobile phone failed to connect.

It would be recalled that a 21-year-old student of the University, Christabel Buoro, also committed suicide over alleged failed love affair.

The lifeless body of the 300-level student of Medical Laboratory Science was discovered four weeks ago at her hostel located on Plot 4 Uwaifo Lane, off Newton Street, Ekosodin, a sprawling students’ community behind the University’s main campus.

Unconfirmed reports had it that Christabel mixed sniper, a popular insecticide, with a bottle of soft drink, which she allegedly drank.

- PM NEWS