IGBOS CRY OUT AT MARGINALIZATION !!!

Igbo Leaders cry out to President Buhari: We are marginalised.

Some leaders of the South East have cried out to the Federal Government at a town hall meeting in Enugu that the Igbos are marginalised by the present administration. They are aware that most of them did not vote for the APC government in 2015 but they want the government to forget the past.

Speakers at the meeting, includes Most Rev. Emmanuel Chukwuma, traditional rulers, stakeholders enumerated areas of marginalisation to include appointments, budget allocations, infrastructural.

Lending his voice to the myriads of lamentations, former information minister, Chief Nnia Nwodo said the government is being slow in delivering whatever it has in stock for Nigerians.

“Can you hasten the pace at which policies are reached; we have listened to great programmes lined up for Nigerians, fantastic ideas but when will they be implemented?

“The people of this part of the country have felt marginalised for a very long time. You didn’t create states; when states were created we were short-changed. When local government was created we were shortchanged.

“I know local governments that are not as populous as two towns in my local government but they were given governments; military governors were giving out local governments. This administration does not look at the issue of restructuring Nigeria with a view to containing the eruptions in various parts of the country.

“The people of the South East feel they are still being punished because of the war. We want a country that is united and peaceful. All the economic efforts you are making will be useless without unity and love amongst us,” he said.

Earlier, Minister of Information and convener of the town hall, Alhaji Lai Mohammed said Enugu is the 5th in a series, which started in Lagos to bridge the gap between government and Nigerians.

He noted, “we are faced with two choices; whether to continue along the old path that had brought us to where we are today; or to chart a new course. We have chosen the latter simple because one cannot continue to do things the same way and expect a different result."

BUHARI'S TOKENISM AT PLAY !!!

Pres. Buhari appoints Adegbuyi as Post-Master general of NIPOST.

President Buhari, has approved the appointment of Bisi Adegbuyi as Post-Master General/Chief Executive Officer of the Nigeria Postal Services (NIPOST). Adegbuyi's appointment was announced in a statement signed by Bolaji Adebiyi, the Director of Press, Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.

MILITARY BOOT OUT MILITANTS !!!

No Where To Hide... Military Smoking Out Militants From Their Hide Outs.

*Military targets 4 more militants' camps
No hiding place for the pipeline vandals and kidnappers terrorising Lagos and Ogun revering areas, as the anti-pipeline vandalism Joint Task Force (JTF) has identified four more camps where the bad guys are hiding, and has now been scheduled for air strike by fighter jets of Nigerians Air Force.

Also, the Joint Task Force has arrested more vandals fleeing from the areas under attack.

In a joint press conference in Lagos yesterday, Chairman of the “Operation Awatse” and Flag Officer Commanding Western Naval Command, Rear Admiral Ferguson Bobai, said through the surveillance gathered the military had identified four key targets.

According to him, the military will bomb the identified targets, which, “when knocked off, will set confusion in the militants and vandals’ camps.”

Recalling the operations in the last couple of days, he said after Nigeria Air Force’s Alpha jets and helicopters identified the targets, the task force invited all the agencies involved to do an after-battle assessment.

“We have seen the video that the reconnaissance aircraft have captured and we are very convinced that there is need to sustain the operation. We will continue to mop up the ground, as the Air Force continues to knock off target that we feel should be taken out.”

On progress made, Bobai said 11 suspects had been arrested and now being processed, adding: “We are profiling and interrogating them to get more clues that will assist us in the operation. All the security agencies are involved in this operation, to avoid infiltration of other areas by militants. The attack will not be limited to Arepo. If we get information that some of them have escaped to Lekki or other areas of Lagos, we will go after them.”

He revealed that the task force would set ablaze the thousands of jerry cans filled with stolen fuel, as captured by air force surveillance camera, since it is difficult to recover them.

The General Officer Commanding, 81 Division of the Nigerian Army, Major General Isidore Edet; the Air Officer Commanding, Air Force Logistics Command, Air Vice Marshal Sani Ahmed; the Commander, 9 Brigade of Nigerian Army, Brig.-General Sani Mohammed; the Lagos Commissioner of Police, Fatai Owoseni; the Commandant, NSCDC, Tajudeen Balogun; and Director, Department of State Security Services (DSS) attended the briefing.

Although the navy chairs the JTF, the aerial bombardment, surveillance and reconnaissance is being carried out under the leadership of the AOC Logistics Command, AVM Sani Ahmed, who coordinates and guides the air component of the entire exercise.

With so many targets in the creeks, it was gathered that the vandals had set up observation posts, which are manned by their heavily armed duty guards. But the heat is getting hotter.

RAMPAGING MILITANTS RAID LAGOS !!!

August 2, 2016
The first sign of disquiet, which a first-time visitor may encounter in the Ikorodu area as he approaches the Igbo-Olomu and Isawo communities, is the ubiquitous presence of a dark green Lagos Task Force vehicle stationed at a major turning.

During a visit to the area on Monday morning, our correspondent observed that heavily armed military personnel had taken different positions on the road, screening and frisking commuters. There was an uneasy calm around the junction. The silence contrasted sharply with the usual cacophony arising from buying and selling in the area, as well as the sound of speeding commercial motorcycles, popularly called okada.

Beyond the junction, the plains and valleys of Igbo Olomu and Isawo, leading to the creeks separating the areas from Arepo in neighbouring Ogun State, also swarmed with soldiers.

It was less than a week after the military started an offensive against suspected pipeline vandals, who had terrorised residents on the coastline, forcing many of them to flee with their families.

But the situation was still far from normal when our correspondent visited some of the communities in the area on Monday. Muti, Elepete, Kajola, Ola Imam and other communities on the flank of Isawo and Igbo Olomu were already deserted. Haunted by endless abductions, rape, armed robbery and deaths, the residents had since abandoned their homes and fled these communities. The few that defiantly chose to stay were seen on Monday nursing the wounds inflicted on them by their tormentors.

One of the residents named Bola Omotunde, a self-employed woman in Kajola community, spoke to our correspondent from a partition on her window. Speaking in a low tone, the mother of three recounted what happened in the community on Sunday.

“It was a terrible experience. Those boys wreaked so much havoc here. We thank God that the government has started dealing with them. Throughout yesterday, the sound of gunshots would not let us sleep. It has been a traumatic experience and my children are not back yet. I paid N10,000 per night in a hotel for three days before a friend took my family in. My children did not write their third term examination before trouble broke out here. Those boys were going from house to house, kidnapping people. I know they will never come back, but it will take time for things to be normal around here,” she said.

But there was no sign of life in Omotunde’s neighbourhood, which was in the Zone A area of Kajola. Not far away from her residents, two men in a block-making factory were busy at work, unperturbed by the deafening silence around them.

One of them, who identified himself as Bello, said some residents had seized the opportunity to construct their houses.

“It is not true that people want to sell their houses. Even if you want to sell, who will buy? What I have noticed is that some residents come in to continue the building of their houses because there was no Omo Onile (land grabbers) to disturb them. You will find artisans working on a few houses between 10am and 3pm. The sites become empty as soon as it is 3.pm. I don’t live here. I live at Ogolonto with my partner. I come here before 10.am and by 4.pm, I start the journey back home to Ogolonto,’’ he said.

At Ola Imam community, the gloom was palpable. As in Kajola, the streets were deserted. This was the community where eight landlords, who volunteered to serve as security men, were slaughtered in one night by marauding pipeline vandals.

A resident, who declined to give his name, said the community would not forget the incident in a while. He berated the government for coming to the aid of the community too late in the day.

“The harm has been done already. Eight landlords in this community were murdered. They were vigilantes who volunteered to keep our community safe from petty thieves. Only one of them was spared because he was nursing his sick child that night. He thought he would be able to join the others, but he slept off. We woke up to the sight of their dead bodies in the morning of the next day.

“No matter what the government is doing now, it cannot bring back those men. Who will compensate their families? We have more widows and fatherless children than ever in the community. One man was kidnapped in his house. I learnt that he paid N5m as ransom. I think this effort of the government is too late,’’ he said.

There was nobody to attend to our correspondent when she visited the homes of some of the landlords on Monday. A female resident, who also declined to give her name, said some women who were raped by the attackers had died of trauma.
“Nobody knew this kind of misfortune could befall this community. Some women were raped right in front of their family members. Do you know that the invaders even used the barrels of their guns To Molest the women? Some of the victims died shortly after the acts. We are praying that the government will fight this battle till the end. The soldiers are more concentrated in the Elepete side which is close to the creeks. But we also feel their impact here,” she said.

TRUMP THE DUMBO !!

By Jose A. DelReal and Anne Gearan July 30 

Republican Donald Trump lashed out Saturday at two Muslim American parents who lost their son while he served in the U.S. military in Iraq and who appeared at the Democratic National Convention last week, stirring outrage among critics who said the episode proves that Trump lacks the compassion and temperament to be president.

Asked to comment on the convention speech of Khizr Khan, a Pakistani immigrant whose son, Army Capt. Humayun Khan, died in Iraq in 2004, Trump described Khan as “very emotional” and said he “probably looked like a nice guy to me” — then accused him of being controlled by the Clinton campaign.

“Who wrote that? Did Hillary’s scriptwriters write it?” he asked in an interview with ABC.

Trump also questioned why Khan’s wife, Ghazala, did not speak on stage, despite the fact that she sat for an interview with MSNBC the following day.

“His wife, if you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say,” he said. “You tell me, but plenty of people have written that. She was extremely quiet and it looked like she had nothing to say.”

The Khans appeared in Philadelphia on Thursday, the same night that Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, formally accepted her party’s nomination. Khizr Khan’s moving remarks quickly reverberated beyond the arena, and their effects have since spilled out onto the campaign trail. In an interview the following day with MSNBC, Ghazala Khan said she did not speak because she is still devastated by her son’s death and grows emotional when she sees his picture.

Although only the latest instance in which Trump has attacked a convention speaker, the Republican nominee’s remarks drew strong rebukes Saturday — but only silence from several senior GOP leaders, including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the vice-presidential nominee, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.

“Trump’s slur against Captain Khan’s mother is, even for him, beyond the pale,” tweeted John Weaver, a Republican strategist for Ohio Gov. John Kasich. “He has NO redeeming qualities.”

Matt Mackowiak, another GOP strategist, tweeted: “There is only one response for Trump to the criticism: ‘As an American, I deeply appreciate the patriotic sacrifice of the Khan family.’”

The Clinton campaign’s Karen Finney offered this: “Trump is truly shameless to attack the family of an American hero. Many thanks to the Khan family for your sacrifice, we stand with you.”

In Youngstown, Ohio, on Saturday, Clinton addressed the controversy as part of a larger discussion of Trump’s temperament.

“He attacked the distinguished father of a soldier who had sacrificed himself for his unit, Captain Khan,” Clinton said in disbelief.

In a statement earlier that day, she said: “I was very moved to see Ghazala Khan stand bravely and with dignity in support of her son on Thursday night. And I was very moved to hear her speak last night, bravely and with dignity, about her son’s life and the ultimate sacrifice he made for his country.”

With Ghazala by his side on the convention stage last week, Khizr Khan blasted Trump’s rhetoric on Muslims and immigrants. Pulling his pocket version of the Constitution from his jacket, he questioned whether Trump has read the document.

“You have sacrificed nothing and no one,” Khan said in a halting and forceful voice.

In the ABC interview, Trump pointed to the sacrifices he has made as a businessman: “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs,” Trump said.

“I think my popularity with the vets is through the roof,” he added later.

The backlash was swift and unsparing Saturday as high-profile political strategists from both parties tore into Trump and questioned his character.

“Trump revealed exactly who he is in this answer and it’s not pretty. A man this callous and cruel can’t be President,” former Obama senior advisor Dan Pfieffer fired off on Twitter Saturday afternoon.

“There is still a role for shame in society,” Stuart Stevens, former top strategist to 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney, tweeted out Saturday in response.

Paul Rieckoff, the founder and chief executive of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, told ABC that Trump’s comparison of his own sacrifice to that of war veterans is an insult.

“For anyone to compare their ‘sacrifice’ to a Gold Star family member is insulting, foolish and ignorant. Especially someone who has never served himself and has no children serving,” he said. “Our country has been at war for a decade and a half, and the truth is most Americans have sacrificed nothing. Most of them are smart and grounded enough to admit it.”

In a statement titled “Setting the Record Straight,” Trump called Humayun Khan a “hero” but rejected his father’s accusations.

“While I feel deeply for the loss of his son, Mr. Khan who has never met me, has no right to stand in front of millions of people and claim I have never read the Constitution, (which is false) and say many other inaccurate things,” the statement read. “If I become President, I will make America safe again.”

Trump avoided the draft during the Vietnam War through several student deferments. He was later medically disqualified from service.

Several of Trump’s critics said Saturday that Trump’s attacks on the Khans are part of a broader pattern in which the candidate lashes out at others in extraordinarily personal terms for criticizing him. Many say that voters should worry about what it means in terms of Trump’s temperament and, in particular, how he would deal with foreign leaders as president.

“He’s a person that has no self-control. He just has no sense of decency or empathy when it comes to dealing with others,” said Tim Miller, a veteran GOP strategist and former communications director for Jeb Bush. “It’s always zero sum. You compliment me, I compliment you. You criticize me, I mock you. That’s what this is about. It’s all about him and his egotism.”

Miller added that Trump’s past statements, including his attack against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for being a prisoner of war, have given Democrats an opening to defend the service of veterans in direct response to the Republican nominee’s own words.

Humayun Khan had completed four years of service before he was sent to Iraq. He was killed four months after he arrived.

To cope with their grief in the aftermath of his death, the Khans moved to Charlottesville in order to be closer to their two other sons, who were attending the University of Virginia, as Humayun had. The Khans have also described at times attending funerals for other soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery as a way of remembering their son.

In the MSNBC interview, Ghazala Khan explained why she did not speak Thursday: “I was very nervous because I cannot see my son’s picture, and I cannot even come in the room where his pictures are. And that’s why. I saw the picture [behind] my back, I couldn’t take it and I controlled myself at that time.”

On Saturday, her husband criticized Trump’s response. “That is typical of a person without a soul, without empathy,” Khizr Khan said in Washington. “And Ghazala… she was in such a shape. She was emotionally and physically, she just couldn’t even stand there, and when we left, as soon as we got off camera, she just broke down. And the people inside, the staff, were holding her, consoling her, and she was just totally emotionally spent. And only those parents that have lost their son or daughter could imagine the pain that such memory causes.”

Trump’s comments about the Khan family are the latest in a series of searing attacks against individuals who spoke at the Democratic convention, including retired four-star Marine Corps Gen. John Allen, whom Trump referred to as a “failed general” during a campaign event in Denver Friday evening.

On the second day of a bus tour through Pennsylvania and Ohio with running mate Sen. Tim Kaine, Clinton continued to build a damaging portrait of the real estate mogul, an extension of the dominant theme at the convention last week to paint the Republican nominee as a self-interested and dangerous “con.”

[Clinton stumps for working-class votes on potential Trump terrain]

“He loses his cool at the slightest provocation,” Clinton said of Trump in Johnstown, Pa. “Just yesterday, he went after retired general John Allen, who commanded our troops in Afghanistan. Gen. Allen is a distinguished Marine, a hero and a patriot. Donald Trump called him a failed general. Why? Because he does not believe Donald Trump should be commander in chief.

“Well, I’d say that proves it,” she continued. “Our commander in chief shouldn’t deride or insult our generals, retired or otherwise.”

Clinton had apparently planned to address the back and forth between Trump and the Khans during her first public remarks Saturday in Johnstown. CNN reported that a producer near the stage saw that portion of the script on Clinton’s teleprompter.

In the MSNBC interview Friday, Khizr Khan called on McConnell (R-Ky.) and Ryan (R-Wis.) — both of whom he called patriots and decent — to repudiate Trump’s comments about Muslims and other immigrants. “This is a moral imperative for both leaders, to say to him, ‘Enough.’ 

“The only reason they’re not repudiating this, his behavior, his threat to our democracy, our decency, our foundation is just because of political consequences,” he said in the interview.

Aides to Ryan and McConnell would not respond directly to the Khans, nor would they address what Trump had to say about the couple. Pence directed media inquiries to the Trump campaign.

Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell, pointed to a December statement in which McConnell said Trump’s suggestion of a Muslim travel ban was “completely and totally inconsistent with American values.”

AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Ryan, also noted the speaker’s past denunciation of the travel ban.

“The speaker has made clear many times that he rejects this idea and himself has talked about how Muslim Americans have made the ultimate sacrifice for this country,” she said.

CHRIS NGIGE: BULL-SHITTING !!!

South East indigenes boo Chris Ngige for defending President Buhari’s appointments

At the Federal Government townhall meeting in Enugu state today August 1st, South East indigenes who attended the meeting booed the Minister of Labor and Employment and former Governor of Anambra state, Chris Ngige, when he spoke in defense of the appointments made so far by President Buhari. Many believe that all of President Buhari's appointments have been lopsided, more in favor of the Northern region of Nigeria.

According to eyewitnesses, when Ngige had mounted the podium to answer questions bothering on the recent appointments, many of the youths booed at him and chanted No! No! No!. He however made his points known that the appointments were not onesided as is being suggested.

ACCORDING TO GBAJABIAMILA !!!

House Leader Gbajabiamila finally reacts to the budget padding.

The Leader of the House of Reps, Femi Gbajabiamila has broken his silence over the budget padding scandal rocking the lower chamber, following accusations of budget fraud against Yakubu Dogara, the speaker, and others by former appropriations committee chairman, Abdulmumin Jibrin.

Gbajabiamila had remained silent since the House descended into a crisis that has drawn the attention of anti-corruption agencies, and sparked calls for the Speaker to step aside.

In a message he sent out to members on Monday, Gbajabiamila said

He should not be dragged into "an arena I tried very hard to stay out of" as wants to remain neutral.

Jibrin had in 2015 withdrawn from the speakership race to back Dogara who was then running a tight race against Gbajabiamila, the then preferred candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress.

There were speculations that Jibrin had now teamed up with Gbajabiamila to unseat the Speaker.

But Gbajabiamila, through his media aide, Wasiu Olanrewaju, told PT he had no deal with Jibrin or any problem with Dogara.

He however called for investigation of the allegations, and cautioned against taking sides.

The lawmaker from Lagos circulated emails to colleagues after unknown people sent text messages suggesting he was part of a group working discreetly to force a leadership change in the House.

He stressed, "I am being dragged into an arena I tried very hard to stay out of only for the good of the House. The Speakership election has come and gone. The election was divisive and acrimonious but I have since worked hard to heal the wounds some of which still fester amongst members.

“It is my responsibility to bring all tendencies in a House I lead together and I have worked well with the Speaker and all other Principal officers in a bipartisan manner and in the interest of the institution and members.

“It is clear that our budget process needs radical reform and very quickly too. Yes, allegations have been made but I strongly believe judgment should not be passed based on allegations. We operate a constitutional democracy and we must at all times submit to its dictates and ethos. All parties are innocent until otherwise proven. This should be our guide. I plead with members. The mudslinging must stop.

“This text message, which desperately seeks to finger me in some macabre plot to destabilize the House is a throwback and echoes our dark post Speakership election history. The resurgence of the faceless text messengers will not help us as a House and let me quickly add that it will fail.”