01062019 - APC lawmakers move against party

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C M Y K 32—SATURDAY Vanguard,JUNE 1, 2019 Beyond the excitement of hearing the buzz of fast cars as they zoom around snake-like curves at incredible speeds, I have not been able to understand the technicalities behind the Formula1 as a sport. But because of a certain Lewis Hamilton whose career I have followed since one magazine introduced him as a prodigious kid many years ago, I know about the circuits. I know for example, that last week was the Monaco Grand Prix which he won through sheer grit, brain and brawn. However, as he and the other contestants lined up for the race, I remembered that I had the luck last month, of seeing the tracks being laid. We were encouraged to feel the excitement by walking the tracks and visiting the stands. The knowledge that I was privy to the preparation of such an important event, was exciting in itself. The race track was one of the tourist attractions. Others were the casinos, the opera house, the museum, the palace and of course the beautiful ‘view’ which you would get if you climbed any of the hilly tops. Monaco has the highest GDP in the world. It is also one of the world’s smallest sovereign states. It is a home for the rich. A whopping three out of ten residents are said to be millionaires. Technically, Residency and Citizenship are easy to acquire. All you need is to own a property or lease one for at least a year. Apart from the cost —a studio flat costs about 3000 euros a month to lease— properties are not that easy to get. As our coach inched along the narrow roads from Nice to Monaco and Monte-Carlo, we were shown the many apartments of international stars who have taken advantage of the easy residency and tax laws. Monaco is a tax haven. This means the stupendous income of the likes of Djokovic who has a house there will not be subject to tax. It is also a haven in many other ways. The air is crisp and fresh, especially on the mountain side. The coastal temperature is relatively warm all At the onset of the first term of the Muhammadu Buhari civilian dispensation four years ago, the inclination was to blame the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP which held the reins of the country in the preceding 16 years for all the problems in the country. However, after four years of Buhari on the saddle, the question as to his responsibility in the critical areas of governance cannot be prevented by the emotional attachment many have used in fending off the attacks on his personae. One excuse that had been used to the point of becoming a cliché was that the president is a man of integrity but that he does not know what his aides are doing. While the critical issue of his performance in the critical areas of economy, security, and corruption remain debatable, one area that he has been rarely assessed is in his stewardship of the ruling party, All Progressives Congress, APC. A female acquittance of your correspondent who four years ago mobilized for Buhari but changed track in 2019, called last Wednesday as the 29 new governors were being inaugurated to remind me that the PDP had 15 of the new governors being inaugurated. That left the party that had control of the Federal Government with 14! That was a departure from the situation in 2015, when the APC had 20 and the PDP nine! In 2019, the party lost among others, Imo, Adamawa, Oyo, Benue, Sokoto and Zamfara States to the PDP. With contentions in Kano and Kaduna, it could be worse. A religious experience year round. The whole place reeks of luxury –from the yachts that dot the seas, the cars on the streets, the gleaming casinos, to the architecture of the buildings. No wonder the South of France had been the resort of European aristocracy and playground of the rich from time immemorial. It is tempting to continue exploring temporal pleasures and resorts of the rich. But my task today is actually on one of the spiritual resorts of the faithful. One of the more famous ones is Lourdes. Each time I talk about pilgrimages or religious experiences, I get asked if I have been to Lourdes. There is a friend of mine who celebrates her birthday there every year. She calls it her renewal. Last month, I visited Lourdes for the first time. It was fortuitously, during the Holy Week, the last week of lent. Lourdes is a small town where there are more hotels than residential apartments because there are more pilgrims or religious tourists than residents. The whole town is built around the religious experience of a peasant girl who in 1858, saw the apparition of the Virgin Mary 18 times! She had gone to collect firewood with her sister and a friend when a ‘little lady dressed in white with a white veil and blue girdle and a golden rose on each foot’ first appeared to her. Her sister didn’t see the apparition and her mother who was told by the sister didn’t believe her. She was beaten for her efforts and forbidden to go to the cave. Her father eventually allowed her to go again and the same figure appeared to her. It took the persistence of the apparitions and the genuineness of the peasant girl’s convictions to convince a sceptical community which even doubted her sanity at some point. From three onlookers to a thousand witnesses over several visits, the community eventually became aware that something unique was happening. It wasn’t until the 16 th apparition and upon the insistence of the priest that the lady referred to herself as ‘the Immaculate Conception.’ She made several requests to Bernadette Soubirous which were personal to the 14 yearold-girl and people respond to that by making the grotto of Massabielle—the cave where the visitations took place—a place of silent contemplations and prayer. But the public requests to Bernadette have formed the precepts of Lourdes which adherents have followed faithfully after the initial scepticism. When the ‘Immaculate Conception’ or ‘Lady of Lourdes’ instructed the peasant girl as ‘a call to penitence and conversion of sinners’ to ‘go and drink from the spring and wash in it and eat of the grass that is there’ there was no spring. Obedient Bernadette had to claw a hole which was filled with muddy water to wash with. It took a couple more attempts before she could drink from it. Three days later, a clear spring had sprung forth. Today, covered by a glass screen, it is one of the attractions to the sanctuary because of its How will Buhari manage the coming APC conflicts? So, when Senator Lawali Shuaibu, the deputy national chairman of the APC asked Comrade Adams Oshiomhole to resign as national chairman on account of the depletion, he only raised a red flag that is indicative of the coming battle that will unsettle the ruling party. As with the governance of the country, Shuaibu, like many APC partisans, did not bring the president into the fray. However, in the days and months ahead as President Buhari progresses in office, his aim of leaving a worthy legacy would largely depend on how he addresses himself to the cohesion in his party. It was the failure of the president to act decisively that led to the losses in many of the states where the APC was humiliated. Take Rivers State for example. What would it have cost the president to have summoned a meeting at the party secretariat between Rotimi Amaechi and Magnus Abe and allowed for a decisive interrogation of the issues between the two tendencies in the state chapter? It is now said that a Third Force We are indeed, in the world to help and light one another’s world irrespective of race perceived healing powers. Every pilgrim is encouraged to drink and have a bath—there are 17 stone baths and several drinking fountains. Speaking of the sick, there is a huge, two winged, six floor building where infirm people from all over the world are attended to, cared for and some, hopefully, healed. Many of the carers are volunteers from all over the world. The Catholic Church is usually reticent about miracles but over seven thousand unexplained healings have been recorded. Another request was made on the 13 th visit when the lady asked that ‘the priests should allow people to come in procession and let a church be built.’ Today, there are 22 places of worship at the sanctuary or the ‘Domain.’ The ‘Marian procession’ is one of the most beautiful sights you can ever see. The lights of candles of thousands of people shining in the darkness of night as a procession goes through town can create a powerful image. And for me, a lesson was learnt. Because of a strong night breeze, every candle went out at least three times during the procession. You simply turned to your side to relight your candle irrespective of the gender or colour of the person. It could be your turn to help that person relight their candle minutes later. More than once, that phrase ‘what does a candle lose when used to light another candle’ came to mind. We are indeed, in the world to help and light one another’s world irrespective of race. Lourdes is built round the tenets of prayer, penitence and poverty. It is a serene place that is devoid of any form of mercantilism. Like my friend who goes there every year says: ‘it is a place of renewal.’ So, when Senator Lawali Shuaibu, the deputy national chairman of the APC asked Comrade Adams Oshiomhole to resign as national chairman on account of the depletion, he only raised a red flag that is indicative of the coming battle that will unsettle the ruling party within the APC allowed the crisis in Rivers to burgeon for the purpose of enabling Amaechi to be humiliated and cut to size ahead of the hustle for 2023. It is common political gossip that Amaechi is known not to flow along with Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the leading 2023 political aspirant from the Southwest. Besides Rivers, the president’s seeming passiveness to the tantrums of former Governor Abdulazziz Yari in Zamfara was seemingly indefensible. In Imo State, Rochas Okorocha’s plot to build a family dynasty seemed to escape the famed anti-corruption concept of the president. The rot in Imo was worsened by the fact that it was regularly alleged that Okorocha was encouraged by some of the president’s enforcers within the presidency who may have been compromised. Despite perceptions of the First Lady’s objections to Senator Jibrilla Bindow in Adamawa, the president could still have intervened by strolling over to the other room and ensuring that his spouse and his party came out the better. But in all of these instances there was an apparent lack of leadership that allowed merchants of politics to prevail to the doom of the APC. Well, some have said that it serves the party right and that the president and the APC should continue to fumble in such a way that would lead the party to disintegration. But is that necessarily right for the polity? The unfolding developments in the National Assembly provides an opportunity for redirection. Some party leaders having agreed among themselves on Senator Ahmad Lawan for Senate President and Femi Gbajabiamila for Speaker are attempting to force it down on other APC legislators as the decision of the party. But where and when the party met and took a decision on the two men has not been said. It is now said that because of the perceived influence of Asiwaju Tinubu on the two men that other party interests are now mobilizing against them endangering their aspirations. President Buhari need not stand up and proclaim anyone as a presiding officer. As a responsible father, it is his duty to ensure that every one of his children is given the opportunity to harness his or her abilities. If he does that, it could well mean a turning around for the country as it would allow the best from his party into taking driving positions in government. But will he?
Iwas not there; I saw the video like many others. The narrative said it happened in Kilo, Ikate, Surulere, Lagos. A newly-wed man walked out on his wife during their wedding reception; saying “I no dey do again” (I am not marrying her anymore),while putting both hands at the back of his neck/head (a sign of despair). His wife was running after him, throwing herself on the ground, but the guy insisted he was done. At a point, he almost went physical with the wife. What could have gone wrong between the time they exchanged marital vows and the reception? Was there a verbal exchange between them? Did he get information revealing earth-shaking secrets? What went wrong? The video did not have any details.But somebody in the background was saying, “something is wrong somewhere.” I believe the video is real, so I am just going to give my take on the whole incidents, which someone in the video described as, “the thing when we dey see for film naim be this; this is real.” One, the incident brings to fore the essence of courtship. Courtship is a period when you scrutinise and get to know your potential spouse better. The objective is to be able to say after a while that “I feel I can spend the rest of my life with this person,” or you opt out if you feel you are with the wrong person. To be able to do this, you need to have all your senses and bearings in place; no sentiments. But the problem with many courtships is that in no time, fleshy lust takes over and sense of judgment becomes blurred. When you take decisions with blurred vision, the probability of making wrong decisions is higher. How did they conduct their courtship that their marriage is over before starting? Two, marriage is not a contract, so the doctrine of “buyers beware,” which operates in the law of contracts, does not operate in marriage. Christian marriage is covenantal and the doctrine of uberrima fides (utmost good t is amazing the amount of acrimoni Ious, malicious and vindictive argument that came in the wake of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s outcry that Islamic Jihadists/terrorists have deliberately marked out a large swat of African land from Mali to Nigeria for the establishment of an Islamic State after their failure to defend the Islamic state that they had declared around Iraq and Syria. The bitterly spiteful debate shows the nature of the ruling party and its supporters; they are not ready to take corrections or criticisms as though the All Progressives Congress is a religion and not a political party and President Mohammadu Buhari has become a god who can do no wrong. If we were engaged in a debate about a less severe matter here, I would have left the insecurity of life and property in Nigeria, to mock Obasanjo, after all, he played totally personal and dastardly politics instead of addressing the beginnings of Islamic arms slinging in Nigeria, when the chance came. Pan back to 2004 please. THE KANO DEBACLE President Obasanjo, acting under an ultimatum by the Council of Ulamma to ‘deal’ with Plateau State, tried to rationalize his declaration of State of Emergency there in 2004 when he unconstitutionally suspended Joshau Dariye, the Governor. Obasanjo even went to the extent of justifying the riotous decimation of Christians in Kano (yet again) where about many Christians were slaughtered as a reprisal killing in reply to the killings in Plateau state within the same time frame. Then, he suspended Dariye for failing to keep his state peaceful…but he failed to lift a finger against the Governor of Kano state… after all, he too failed to maintain peace in his state. But Obasanjo forgot that he had the duty to maintain peace in any part of Nigeria—as he controlled the Police and the Armed Forces as well as the Department of State Security, etc. Obasanjo said that the situation in Yelwa threatened peace in Nigeria, forgetting that Kano had by then acquired the reputation as the fertile state for frequent ethno-religious strife. Really violent clashes had been taking place in Kano in the three years preceding the Plateau State riots, and those were three out of Obasanjo’s then four years in Aso Rock Presidential Villa. In those three years Kano people killed Christians, After wedding drama faith) is what operates here. During courtship, courting parties must exercise utmost good faith. There must be full disclosure.”Courtship bears some similarities to insurance. In insurance a buyer of the insurance product (the insured) has a responsibility to disclose to the insurance company (the underwriter) any information that aggravates or alters the usual nature of the risk the company is about to assume (underwrite). Also during courtship, parties should disclose fully any condition that will make the other party have a second thought about continuing with the relationship.”(You can read more inLife Lessons from Mudipapa).Did the young man hear something about his new wife, hitherto hidden from him,that made him to have a second thought about the marriage between the time he exchanged vows and during the reception? Did he hear something new that made him to feel betrayed by his few-hours-old wife? I do not know, but there is a possibility. The other thing in the video that made me feel gutted was the wife running after her husband in the streets and hitting herself on the ground. Where were her family members? I could only see the chief bridesmaid consoling and running after her. When the incident happened, her family should have How the Nor orth became a killing field burnt their churches and houses and looted their property while protesting the staging of ‘Miss World’ beauty pageant in Nigeria, American invasion of Afghanistan, in support of Osama bin Laden, and against American attack on Iraq. Indeed, the particular Kano killing Obasanjo had pretended to be a reprisal killing for the Yelwa crisis in Plateau state, was in protest against American continuous presence in Iraq; according to newspaper reports of the violent demonstration and the setting on fire of the Kano branch of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Acknowledging the problems posed by Kano, The President wrote in a letter to the Sultan of Sokoto:”You will agree with me that what we have in Kano is a chronic situation whereby when there is an ethnic dispute or clash anywhere bordering on religion...Muslims of any sect and at any level in other parts of Nigeria, but particularly in Kano take it upon themselves to slaughter innocent people from other parts of the country based on their ethnicity, religion and social situation as reprisal.” Obasanjo did not ensure that any participant in the killing orgies in Yelwa or Kano was charged to court. Blood-letting had become a normal thing in the North. It is like the present situation where rampaging Fulani herdsmen attack and wipe out whole communities, and the Kaduna Governor, Nasir el-Rufai would joke that the Fulani never forgets a wrong—as though the Fulani has the right to kill at will to avenge any evil—real or imagined. In that same lackadaisical way, even the President has called upon the people of Benue to be more accommodating to their rallied round her immediately. They should have consoled her and given her some words of comfort: “don’t worry; we are going to sit down and resolve the matter.” Running after the guy in the streets was not classy. At that point, nothing would have changed; the guy was in a rage. Tempers need tocool down before you resolve issues of this nature. Moreover, their church and families would have to be involved. In some denominations, like the Catholic Church, they will have sponsors whose duty it is to resolve such issues. Three, did the young man contemplate and really ponder the vows he took earlier? All too often, exchange of marital vows is a hollow ritual that many about-to-wed people want to get out of the way so that they can move on to mundane stuff like their reception, their wellchoreographed dance, after wedding dress, etc. Someone who pondered the vows he took earlier could not have been shouting,”I no do again,” the way the young man did.Moreover, as I watched the video over and over again, I kept asking whether the guy actually loved the lady before going into the marriage or he acted neighbours just when 77 dead Benue people killed by suspected herdsmen were being buried. Obasanjo who suspended Dariye, set up a State of Emergency in Plateau, failed to release a report on the Yelwa killings over which he suspended Dariye. Dariye was punished for national crises which Obasanjo as the President should have been held responsible for. In fact, Dariye was punished for his anti-Obasanjo and pro- Atiku Abubakar politics; he was one of the James Ibori-led PDP Governors who openly opposed Obasanjo’s re-election in 2003. The core leaders of that opposition— Dariye, Bayelsa’s Dipreye Alamieyesigha, Abia’s Uzor Orji Kalu, Adamawa’s Boni Haruna, Benue’s George Akume and Delta’s James Onanefe Ibori would be relentlessly pursued, some weeded out of PDP or even impeached by Abuja-manipulated kangaroo panels. Alamieyeseigha suffered the worst fate; he was murdered when he was not allowed to receive adequate medical treatment for the surgery he had in Germany. The second leg of this article is that crime, random crime as opposed to religious-induced one, has long made Nigeria unsafe. As David Kaplan wrote in “The Coming Anarchy: How scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet” in SATURDAY Vanguard, , JUNE 1, 2019—33 perfunctorily. You do not treat somebody you love and deeply care for the way he did. The scriptures will help us here. Mary, mother of Jesus, was betrothed to Joseph. Before they could start living together as husband and wife, he found out she was pregnant and he was not responsible for the pregnancy.If Joseph were like this our young man, he would have surrendered Mary to the Jews to be stoned to death in line with the Jewish customs and traditions of the time. But Joseph, being a man of honour and desiring to spare Mary the public shame because he cared for her inspite of what happened, decided to divorce her quietly Matthew 1:18-19). The rest of the story you know. Where do they go from here? Both of them agreed to get married before going ahead, both of them must also sit down to decide the way forward. They will need help because both of them seem to be consumed by emotions, not reason,right now. Their church and families will be very useful, especially if the family members can look at the issue dispassionately. If it is just a misunderstanding of issues, they might be able to resolve it amicably and they can go and live happily (I hope) thereafter. But if it is an issue of fundamental condition (like hiding a previous marriage, child or critical health condition from the man), then the young man has sufficient grounds to ask for the annulment of the marriage. Annulment is different from divorce. Divorce means that a marriage was valid, but it was dissolved. Annulment means the marriage is regarded as invalid from the beginning because it was based on falsehood. Finally, the marriage, as it is, is invalid because it was not consummated. They just left the church for reception when the guy opted out. For a marriage to be valid, husband and wife must engage in sexual intercourse after the wedding. This has not taken place in this instant. Readers interested in getting a copy of Life Lessons from Mudipapa (referred to above) can contact us on mudipapa65@gmail.com or 08186535360 the Atlantic Monthly of November February 1994, “The cities of West Africa at night are some of the unsafest places in the world. Streets are unlit; the police often lack gasoline for their vehicles; armed burglars, carjackers, and muggers proliferate” Kaplan wrote: “In cities in six West African countries I saw similar young men everywhere— hordes of them. They were like loose molecules in a very unstable social fluid, a fluid that was clearly on the verge of igniting. He argued that in the villages of Africa it is perfectly natural to feed at any table and lodge in any hut. But in the cities this communal existence no longer holds. You must pay for lodging and be invited for food. When young men find out that their relations cannot put them up, they become lost. They join other migrants and slip gradually into the criminal process. In the poor quarters of Arab North Africa,” he continued, “there is much less crime, because Islam provides a social anchor: of education and indoctrination. Here in West Africa, we have a lot superficial Islam and superficial Christianity. That is why there is less crime, especially riotous killing in the Islamic country of Turkey than in Northern Nigeria. Martin van Creveld, a military historian at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, in The Transformation of War, stated: “so fighting in many ways is not a means but an end. Kaplan wrote a far back as 1994: “When I asked Pentagon officials about the nature of war in the 21 century, the answer I frequently got was “Read Van Creveld.” The top brass are enamored of this historian not because his writings justify their existence but, rather, the opposite: Van Creveld warns them that huge state military machines like the Pentagon’s are dinosaurs about to go extinct and that something far more terrible awaits us.” Debunking the great military strategist Carl von Clausewitz, Van Creveld, who may be the most original thinker on war since that early-nineteenthcentury Prussian, writes, “Clausewitz’s ideas... the period of the “threefold division into government, army, and people” which state-directed wars enforce is ending. Now, political, social, economic, and religious motives were hopelessly entangled and the new armies consist of mercenaries, all were also attended by swarms of military entrepreneurs (who buy guns for the herdsmen, for example). They robbed the countryside on their own behalf”... like the herdsmen and bandits or kidnappers David Kaplan’s article appeared in 1994. Martin van Crevid wrote even before that, but the Nigerian military was unprepared when Boko Haram or Zamfara Bandits appeared decades later.
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01062019 - APC lawmakers move against party

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