Key figures in Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are reportedly shifting their support from former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to the Governor of Oyo State, Seyi Makinde, as their preferred candidate for the 2027 presidential elections.

This development emerges shortly after PDP governors successfully mediated peace among conflicting factions within the party.

Despite recent efforts to solidify unity within the party, sources close to the PDP National Working Committee, who lean towards Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, indicate a growing endorsement for Makinde’s candidacy.

This shift appears to be a strategic move to derail Atiku’s potential nomination, who has been criticized within party circles as a ‘serial contestant.’

Sources who spoke with Punch suggest that some party leaders remain resentful towards Atiku for allegedly mishandling the party’s campaign in the 2023 elections.

The dissatisfaction stems from his failure to reconcile with a group of five disgruntled governors who had demanded the resignation of the then-national chairman, Iyorchia Ayu, contributing to internal rifts during a crucial election period.

The group, notably including Wike, Makinde, and former governors Samuel Ortom, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, and Okezie Ikpeazu of Benue, Enugu, and Abia states respectively, had previously opposed Atiku’s candidacy in the last election cycle.

A source disclosed, “Every election cycle, you will be given a presidential ticket; you will bungle it. Look at the mess that he caused for us at the 2023 election. What was difficult in going to kneel before the aggrieved five governors (G-5) and winning the election for us?

“Now, it is one of those same men you cried about that is giving you a problem. He could have waited till after the election and deceived Wike as (former President Olusegun) Obasanjo did during his time. Atiku was not serious and sincere about winning that presidency.”

A few members of the NWC, who did not want to be identified, also felt Atiku was always seeking to experiment with the PDP and had not shown enough zeal to win it, following the manner he handled his differences with the camp of Wike and the other four governors during the intrigue of Ayu-must-go campaign.

They also feared that he may no longer be a sellable candidate in 2027 because of his age, hence the need for a younger and more vibrant candidate like Makinde.

“The same (Iyorchia) Ayu he was protecting told us during the campaign that both Atiku and Tinubu are his friends. But you were there playing politics like a greenhorn.

“Just because of Ayu, you sacrificed five governors. There was no way those five governors would not have changed the story for us. We lost the presidential election by less or a little over one million votes.

“That is why we are seeking a way out. Nobody can just be coming and using the PDP to experiment every four years. For now, we are supporting Seyi Makinde. Let this aspiration go to the South West this time. Makinde has shown capacity. He is a Christian and a Southerner.

“Let us try the other side of the country for a change. Seyi is young and vibrant. He can connect with both the young and old. We only need to get a powerful northern candidate for him, and he is good to go,” an NWC member disclosed.

When quizzed on how the narrative moved from talks about the chances of Atiku working together with Peter Obi, who many thought would defect from the Labour Party in the wake of the leadership crisis rocking his party, the PDP chieftain said the former LP candidate was not willing to take the bait.

He said, “On Obi, I can tell you he has not made up his mind to come to the PDP. If he decides today, the equation may change. For now, he is still with the Labour Party.”

Meanwhile, Makinde has openly declared that he is qualified to contest and would push for the 2027 presidential election agenda when the time is right.

Speaking with reporters during a visit to Fashola farm in Oyo town on Friday, Makinde stated that speculations about his political future were unnecessary and unsolicited.

The governor stated that “he is old enough to speak for himself on any issue without fear or intimidation,” adding that he would do so publicly if he had anything to say about his political future.

The governor also cautioned Nigerians against allowing the country to slide into a one-party state.

The former VP’s Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, in his reaction said that they are not under any form of pressure over the choice of Makinde as was being speculated.

According to him, people should focus on how Nigerians would overcome the current hardship in the land, rather than talk about who should be given the presidential ticket for 2027.

He said, “Who is threatened? We are talking about how Nigerians will survive the economic problems they are facing, some people about 2027. Is it not too early? We are concerned about the welfare of Nigerians. We are not bothered about their machinations.

“It is only a man who doesn’t have the interest of Nigerians at heart that will be talking about 2027, especially when people are dying every day. We are not ready for that drama.”

The federal government has beamed a searchlight on officers and men stealing arms and selling them to terrorists, bandits and other criminal gangs.

LEADERSHIP gathered that this came up as a result of the declaration of the national security adviser (NSA) Nuhu Ribadu, who disclosed that the most arms being used by terrorists in the country are weapons that were purchased with the taxpayers’ money.

Ribadu had accused security agents of selling their arms and ammunition to the criminals.

The NSA rained curses on the security personnel who facilitate the movement of weapons to terrorists, bandits and other non-state actors.

He gave assurance that the government would do everything possible to ensure the country is safe, secure and protected.

“We have to find a way of putting a stop to this. If we want to recover our country and live in peace and stability, we must,” Ribadu was quoted as saying concerning the sale of arms by security personnel to criminal gangs.

“The worst human being is a policeman or a soldier who will take arms from his formations and sell it or hide it out for the wrong people to come and kill his colleagues.

We must fight these people, but there are merchants of death and evil from the outside world.

“The proliferation of illicit small arms and light weapons remains a major threat to our national security, exacerbating issues such as insurgency, banditry and other violent crimes,” he said.

Ribadu’s revelation has sparked many reactions, questions, and concerns about how non-state actors, most of whom have not crossed the Nigerian border, are getting their weapons.

A source told LEADERSHIP that there is uneasy calm concerning where these terrorists are getting their weapons, adding that even though a process has been put in place to arrest the culprits, with the new agency under the Office of the National Security Adviser, more attention will now be given to security personnel, especially the police.

He noted that the military had been arresting some culprits, even though the number is small compared to the amount of arms in the hands of non-state actors.

He added that little progress had been made, especially in the Nigerian Police Force (NPF), which gave more insight into the new approach.

LEADERSHIP gathered that at least 10 soldiers were arrested between 2020 and 2024 for stealing and selling arms and ammunition. Among them, some have been dismissed from service, while some cases are still pending.

LEADERSHIP had reported that troops of Operation Hadin Kai had on October 11, 2022 arrested a serving soldier for allegedly stealing and supplying ammunition to terrorists.

The soldier, identified as Iorliam Emmanuel, was working under the 156 task force battalion in Mainok, Borno State.

The Zamfara State police had in April 2021 arrested seven serving military officers for allegedly supporting banditry activities in the state.

The military personnel allegedly supplied bandits with logistics and information.

Another soldier was arrested on May 9, 2024 over stolen ammunition and grenades concealed in a bag of rice in Maiduguri, Borno State.

The soldier, identified as L/cpl Mubarak Yakubu, was arrested with 756 rounds of 7.62mm special ammunition and four 36 hand grenades.

In August 2024, another serving soldier, a sergeant, was arrested with 485 rounds of 7.62 mm special ammunition and two magazines in Borno State.

“This exercise should encompass both military and para-military formations. It is worrying that terrorists who have not crossed the border of this country are holding sophisticated weapons,” a source said.

Nigerians have called for the searchlights to include both military and paramilitary.

The director of defence information, Brigadier General Tukur Gusau, declined comment on what the military had done. He said the minister had responded to the allegations and he won’t speak further.

Also, the director of defence media operations, Major General Edward Buba, declined to comment on the issue and referred our reporter to Army spokesman.

[Leadership]

Over two million smallholder Nigerian farmers have accessed about $40.8 million in credit facilities through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s ‘Innovative Market-led Extension Delivery’ project in three years.

Mr Jean-Pierre Rousseau, Project Director, Winrock International, USAID, stated this on Monday at a media briefing ahead of the national impact summit on the project scheduled to be held on Wednesday in Abuja.

He said the project has exposed 2.021 million smallholder farmers to new information, technologies and services in Benue, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Kaduna, Kebbi and Niger states, with greater access to improved agricultural technologies and financial access working with micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) on alternative models of extension delivery.

Mr Rousseau said the summit becomes necessary to share the project’s impact with other key stakeholders within and outside Nigeria to catalyse adoption and sustainability across the 36 states and the FCT.

Dr Ben Odoemena, Chief of Party, USAID Feed the Future Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services Activity in Nigeria, said the project has identified 39 most impactful practices (MIPs) as key extension innovation messages or business solutions that MSMEs need to reach smallholder farmers to enhance their capacity.

He said about 70% of the improved agricultural practices are climate smart to help farmers adapt or build resilience to climate change.

“A total of 1,088 gainful jobs were created by the MSMEs, mainly youths, to cope with increasing demand for agricultural inputs and extension by the expanding number of farmers in their business networks,” he added.

[DailyTrust]

The 2023 presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo, has accused the President Bola Tinubu-led government of worsening Nigeria’s economic woes.

Adebayo likened the government’s policies, including the removal of petrol subsidies and the floatation of the naira, to squeezing Nigerians “like oranges,” leaving them to bear the brunt of escalating hardship across the nation.

In this interview with the DAILY POST, he shared his alternative ideas that would have made life better and easier for Nigerians instead of the petrol subsidy removal and floating of the Naira by the current administration, which have brought untold hardship to Nigerians and brought the economy to its knees with the Naira falling to its lowest ebb in the international money market.

He spoke on a wide range of other issues, including the politics of oil refineries in Nigeria and the issue of tax incentives, among others.

Nigerians are currently going through hard times as a result of the poor economy; are people like you also affected by the harsh economy?

As leaders, whatever our people are going through, we are also going through it. The pain began to affect me even before the election because I already saw what was coming. So, it’s a case of a doctor who can see that the patient has cancer even though the patient is not aware.

Are you saying you saw this coming?

Not only did I see it coming, I also said that it was coming, and I said it everywhere. Nigeria has only one problem. All the problems they are telling you about Nigeria are just symptoms of one problem and that is bad governance. Like Mrs Oluremi Tinubu said, her husband is not the cause of the problem; he is only the symptom of the problem.

Talking about alternatives, the three major candidates of the APC, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and the Labour Party, LP, during the 2023 electioneering campaigns, all promised they would remove subsidy and float the currency. You didn’t go that route in your campaign, instead, you presented other alternatives. How do you think your alternatives would have had positive impacts on the economy if you had won the election?

The first thing to do in an economy is to realise that there is a lot of wealth trapped in the talent and energy of the people such that the first thing you need to do is to target the reduction of unemployment. The reason monetary economics is allowed is because the fundamental objective of monetary economics is to achieve good employment, not only of labour but also on all factors of production, so that you have allocative efficiencies that clearly want to make you want to invest your money in the economy and get people employed.

There are five areas you can look into. Agriculture is number one because it employs the highest number of people. It is also a low hanging fruit because it is easy to start. Anybody with a tractor and bucket can get started. It is scalable, so you cannot go into producing raw materials and other things that are additives. It will also make sure you govern your territory such that you are now in full control of your land, where a large portion of it are being shared with bandits since some of them are not in the control by the government. With agriculture, you will create employment and solve the problems of food as well. If you look at the incidence of food prices in the entire aggregation of inflation, it will come down.

Also, you have to invest in infrastructure. Investing in infrastructure means that you don’t allow people to do for themselves as individuals, things that we can all do collectively. That means you want to make sure that people travelling from one end of the country to the other don’t have to travel in their own vehicles because you have public transport. You need to give people good health. You need to build rural health facilities, as this will employ people and even keep people healthy and more productive. You need to make social investment in education. Many of the cases of unemployment which we are dealing with in our time will be rapidly dealt with, recruiting teachers. But the problems of the governors, even with all the money they are making now is that they don’t want to employ people because when they employ, there is less discretionary spending. This is because if you employ, you must pay as you are bound by contract. Some states, rather than increase compensation for their staff, tell their staff to come to work twice a week.

If you had won, you would not have removed subsidy on petrol and you would also not have floated the currency. What would you have done differently?

Look at the costing. I am taking their numbers so that they won’t say I’m second-guessing. When the noise first came out, it was under former President Goodluck Jonathan. At that time, it was travelling towards N1 trillion. At a time, it was over N1 trillion. When President Muhammadu Buhari came, it travelled all the way to N4 trillion in the budget, but there was some transparency in the lies such that you had to budget it in the books; it was there in the books. When we were campaigning, some were saying that if we were not careful, it would come to about N8 trillion.

For me, if we audit our consumption, definitely we don’t consume up to N2 trillion at the old price. Secondly, if we get our refineries to work, it will be less. And Nigerians need to know the reason our refineries are not working.

Can you explain further?

Let me give you a simple explanation. When you are trying to repair an existing refinery, and you have not finished repairing it and somebody gets an architect to draw a map of a refinery, you went to negotiate lands in many places, got lands, started construction, finished constructing, and now selling; you haven’t finished repairing the one already in existence. What does that tell you? It tells you that the priority is to make sure that those things don’t work.

What do you think is the problem? Is it interest within the government that doesn’t want the refineries to work or interest within the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL?

The NNPCL is part of the government, and nobody gets appointed without the government’s approval. The idea is that they don’t want to run the government. They don’t want to run the economy. They are fighting to take control of the petroleum market. They see you as a customer, not as citizens. They don’t want to be responsible for ensuring you have a good life of training your children, you can go to work with seven percent of your salary to pay for transportation.

How did the government refuse to make the refineries work?

They need to create scarcity of work. These refineries were built years ago. The first one was part of our first development plan, the Port Harcourt Refinery, which was done during the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa era. Then, General Yakubu Gowon came and started building that of Warri. By that time, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo had taken over, and built Kaduna. The idea was that we would be building more because we are an energy-rich country, and we were not supposed to be worried about the small quantity being consumed in Nigeria. If we are productive, we should be consuming one million barrels a day. We were supposed to be exporting so that even the little part we are consuming locally will not be the essence of government. How many refineries are in Singapore? Go to the refinery market, with $2 billion to $3 billion you will build a good refinery. People call bogus figures here because the government is involved and they try to siphon the money. The refinery is an old technology distillation. The refinery in the Gulf of Beirut has been there since 1900. The one in Pennsylvania in was built in 1903, and they are still working. So, what is new about refinery? Talk to chemical engineers and ask them about the largest and most complex catalytic cracking unit. How much would it cost, even if they have to get it designed from the beginning? So, don’t let us pretend that we don’t know that we have been captured and our brothers and sisters in government who captured us want to squeeze us like oranges and squeeze the juice out of us, and probably, discard us when there is nothing more. They want to remove economic participation.

Perhaps you are right; that’s why they said recently that the rich may pay as much 25 percent on personal income tax…

I, Adewole Adebayo, government, come and tax me. I am ready to pay 50 percent of my income in taxes. I don’t mind, after all, in Norway, it is higher than that. I am spending billion, literally, to power my productive enterprises. But, you cannot pauperise us, take all the taxes and still not be responsible for anything.

Anybody who tells you that we should remove subsidy from an underdeveloped economy where productivity is low had F9 in economics. In China, with $10000, you can have a factory. All you need to do is to demonstrate to the city or the government there that you are producing this particular product. If they see the production plan, they will give you a factory on credit, and you start paying back. That is not available here in Nigeria. China is the largest producer of finished goods because of the subsidy. And you don’t have to be in China. If it’s the US, the first thing they welcome you with is a letter to come and borrow money. Sometimes, the Federal Reserve gives money to banks at negative interest to force them to lend money to people. During COVID 19, I was here in Nigeria. When I went to the US, I got stack of letters, awarding me money, wanting to give money to my law firm. They are subsidizing with credit.

If you go to Europe, they are subsidizing with social services. You the employer of labour, when your worker is sick, you are not the one to pay because every worker, every citizen has life insurance and other social services, so it is cheaper to hire labour there.

Come back to my beloved Nigeria. What is the incentive for productivity? Nothing, so you cannot compete. And the little that people are enjoying because we are petroleum rich country, we should now have low energy cost. That is what will drive you to say, let me go to Nigeria to take advantage of the low energy cost for my production.

How about offering a tax holiday?

Tax holiday is one of the ways through which they steal our money. Somebody will do 100 kilometres of poorly done cement road, very narrow and not standardised, and they will give the person billions of Naira for the same road that can be done by local government. Just collect your taxes.

Are you saying that it is the mindset of the people emerging as leaders that determines the level of productivity in government and governance?

These people don’t want to emerge as leaders. They want to take control of the tap of money. They don’t want to lead you because if you are leading, you look back sometimes to see whether your people are following you. This is a case of doing to you what the colonial master was planning to do when Jaja of Opobo, Nana of Itshekiri, Ovonranmwen Nogbaisi of Benin Empire, and everybody was fighting that the colonialists that they cannot come to our place and exploit us. That is why you have the statue of Madam Tinubu in Lagos. Now, you are not being exploited by these people, you are now being exploited by your own people who are exporting your own money overseas because they want their names to appear as one of the richest persons in town. We need to stop that because we are growing a large population that needs to be productive, and that needs to express their talents. We need to form a government that gives support services. The essence of government is to back you up.

I hope there won’t be a tipping point to all these, what do you think?

I don’t want us to reach a tipping point because the tipping point is a mirage. You would think people will never accept N500 per litre of fuel. They accepted over N1,000 and they are going towards N2,000 without anybody stopping them. We need to govern. That is the summary.

Any government that cannot help you to find your missing cat or dog after a while won’t be able to find a missing child. After a while, they won’t be able to find a missing town and after a while, a community will go. Going to the Eagle’s Square to hold the Bible or Quran and say a few words, salute the police and then disappear into the shadows, doesn’t make you a government. The people must feel your presence if truly you are governing.