Gist Arena

Nobel Prize Winner Wole Soyinka on Friday offered presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari qualified support of his quest, as he rejected President GoodluckJonathan’s claims to re-electability. “The clock of Change cannot tick sufficiently fast,” he said with just one week to the election, but warned that Nigeria faced a difficult and queer challenge.   “There are no blacks and whites,” he pronounced. “It is not a contest between saints and demons, not one between salvation and damnation. If anything, it is closer to a fork in the road where uncertainty lurks - whichever choice is made.” He questioned where the hopes of a Buhari presidency may lead, in view of the resentment of his previous leadership with its record of “grievous assaults against Nigerian humanity, with a landscape of broken lives that continues to lacerate collective memory.”  He...

The Independent National Electoral Commission has announced a shift in the 2015 general election earlier scheduled for February 14 and 28. Announcing the postponement at a press conference in Abuja on Saturday night, the chairman of the Commission, Attahiru Jega, said the presidential and national assembly elections will now hold on March 28 while the governorship and state assemblies election will take place on April 11. Mr. Jega said the elections have to be postponed after the nation’s security agencies indicated to the commission that they were not available to support the elections planned for February 14 and 28. The INEC chairman said security operatives agencies told INEC that they were commencing a six-week special operation against Boko Haram insurgents in the north eastern corridors of the country and would rather not be distracted by the elections. Mr. Jega announced that the security forces also said the operations are due to commence on Februar...

The Boko Haram sect, which is fighting a violent insurgency in northeast Nigeria, has about 4,000-6,000 “hardcore” fighters, United States intelligence officials said on Friday. In an assessment of the Book Haram sect, whose five-year uprising has included massacres and kidnappings from Nigeria into neighboring states, the officials said they did not believe it posed a major threat to Nigeria’s oil fields in the south. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Boko Haram militants were believed to be still holding about 300 schoolgirls they kidnapped early last year and had dispersed them to multiple locations. Around 10,000 people were killed in Boko Haram attacks last year. The group poses the biggest security threat in Nigeria, Africa’s top oil producer and biggest economy, Reuters says. Concern over the insurgency appears to be one of the main reasons for a surge in political support for opposition leader, Muhammadu Buhari, in the F...

Four months ago, Demeteriya Nabire was killed by a crocodile when she went to the lake near her home to fetch water. The animal later came back to the area but found Nabire’s husband waiting, ready to take revenge. Demeteriya Nabire was at the water’s edge with a group of women from her village – they were gathering water from Uganda’s Lake Kyoga when the crocodile grabbed her. It dragged her away and she was never seen again. Her husband, Mubarak Batambuze, was devastated – Nabire was pregnant when she died, and he had lost not only his wife but an unborn child as well. He felt powerless. But then last month he heard the crocodile had returned. “Somebody called me and said, ‘Mubarak, I have news for you – the crocodile that took your wife is here – we are looking at it now.’” The 50-year-old fisherman made his way to the lake with some friends. “He was a very big monster, and we tried fighting him with stones and sticks. But there was nothing we could do,” he ...

General Overseer of The Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG, Pastor Adeboye Adejare Enoch, has updated his profile picture and cover photo of his official Facebook account. Pastor Adeboye’s official page has over 2.2 million likes. The profile picture of ‘GO’, as he is fondly called, now shows a photo of him praying for President Goodluck Jonathan, presidential candidate of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. Similarly, Pastor Adeboye’s cover photo shows an image of him in a prayer session with some chieftains of the All Progressives Congress, APC, led by its Vice-Presidential candidate, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, a senior pastor of the church.

President Goodluck Jonathan on Saturday said various attacks by Boko Haram in Abuja were planned to extend to parts of the country with the intention of bringing down the nation. He stated this when he attended the revival service of the Lord’s Chosen Charismatic Revival Movement at its headquarters in Ijesha, Lagos. “The idea of the group was to start from the centre of the country and then move to bring the whole country down,’’ Jonathan said. He listed the United Nation’s building, Police Headquarters, Army barracks market and Nyanya Motor Park as some of the places the terrorist organisation attacked in the federal capital. He, however, said that the efforts of the Federal Government had curtailed the spread of the attacks to other parts of the country, except in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states. The president said that insurgency and terrorism were global phenomena that were not peculiar to Nigeria, but added that with international collaboration, ...

The United States called for Nigeria's presidential elections to be held on time, as the nation's electoral commission weighs a delay over difficulty distributing voter cards. The US supports "peaceful, free, transparent and credible electoral processes in Nigeria and renews its calls on all candidates, their supporters and Nigerian citizens to reject election-related violence," deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a statement. "The United States also looks to Nigeria to hold these elections on time." The presidential election is scheduled for February 14. Harf urged the country's security forces to be impartial so Nigerians can vote "safely and without undue delay." Nigeria's Independent National Electoral Commission is scheduled to announce on Saturday if it plans to postpone the polls. Some politicians have voiced concern over an inability to distribute identification cards to 68.8 million...

The meeting between the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Attahiru Jega, and the nation’s resident electoral commissioners has ended in a deadlock, PREMIUM TIMES has learnt. The deadlock follows the rejection of the proposal to shift the elections by 21 RECs who insisted that election must go on as planned. However, the RECs have agreed to support the poll shift on two conditions. Firstly that Mr. Jega must extract commitment from the Presidency and security agencies that further extension will not be required after six weeks. “RECs need a guarantee that there will not be further postponement after the six weeks they are demanding,” our source said. He also said the second condition was that the commission should be allowed to decide how long the postponement should last. “The feeling is that outside forces, especially the security agencies, should not be the ones to decide how long to shift the elections. That should be solely decided ...

The Emir of Kano... Emir Muhammad Sanusi II has just been confirmed officially as the 14th Emir of Kano under the Fulani Dynasty. He has been presented with his staff of office by the king makers of the Emirate council signifying the official beginning of his time as the Emir of Kano. Present at the event are General Muhammadu Buhari, Gen. Yakubu Gowon, General Abdulrahman Dambazau, Father Mathew Kuka, Speaker Aminu Tambuwal, Sultan of Sokoto, Emir of Dutse, Governors Ibrahim Gaidam, Kashim Shettima, Babangida Aliyu, Rabiu Kwankwaso amongst many other invited guests. 

Twenty one Resident Electoral Commissioners, RECs, of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, have rejected a proposal to postpone Nigeria’s general elections billed for February 14 and 28. In a vote conducted Saturday by the INEC chairman, Attahiru Jega, after he met with political parties and the civil society, 21 RECs said the elections should continue as planned while 16 others voted in support of a reschedule. Nigeria has 37 RECs, each for a state and the Federal Capital, Abuja. The outcome of the vote came as Nigerians await INEC’s decision on whether the elections are moved or not. Civil Society leaders said Mr. Jega had told them at their meeting that the commission was under pressure to postpone the polls after all security agencies, including the military and the police, warned that they will only support polls held at least six weeks after the current dates. Jibrin Ibrahim, a senior fellow at the Centre for Democracy and Development, CDD, in...

The Independent National Electoral Commission has said it is yet to take a decision to shift the general elections or hold them as scheduled. Kayode Idowu, the spokesperson to the INEC Chairman, Attahiru Jega, disclosed this to PREMIUM TIMES a short while ago. The presidential and national assembly elections has been fixed for February 14 while those of the governorship and state houses of assembly are scheduled for February 28. The Nigerian government and the ruling Peoples Democratic Party have been pushing for the postponement of the polls citing the security challenge in the northeast zone of the country as well as INEC’s poor handling of the distribution of the Permanent Voters Cards as reasons. Although the electoral body has insisted it was ready for the elections, the Council of State rose from its meeting on Thursday asking it to go ahead, while also advising it to consult widely on the matter. This prompted INEC to commence a fresh round of consultati...

The Lagos State government yesterday ordered the closure of all markets in the state today Feb. 7th, to enable all market men and women to obtain their Permanent Voters Cards (PVC). This comes a day after the state government declared work-free day to enable workers collect their PVCs The collection of the PVCs officially ends tomorrow Feb. 8th. But, yes there's a but..INEC is meeting today to determine whether or not to go ahead with the Feb. 14th and 28th election.

Ayaba Badirat Adeyemi, the youngest wife of the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi matriculated from a university recently and the royal family threw her a party to celebrate...

One year and one month later, and under his very watch, Boko Haram has become savagely audacious. The embarrassing failure of CDS Alex Badeh and Jonathan’s government has become an excuse to mess with the country’s future, making us look like a land of fools and idiots. In decent countries Badeh, all the service chiefs and indeed Jonathan, their appointor, would have resigned with their tails between their legs. They would have publicly apologised for the grief they have brought upon the nation through their incompetence. They would have repented for the shame of Nigeria, once Africa’s giant, now reduced to looking to Chad and Cameroon and Niger Republic for salvation from Boko Haram. They would have been afraid to retain their positions much less contemplate using their failure to press for the shift of an election date foreknown years ago. But that, obviously, will be expecting too much. This Saturday, against common sense and the wise counsel of the...

As you read this, Nigerian military service chiefs have told INEC that no soldier will be made available to provide security anywhere in the country if it goes ahead with its plans to hold the presidential elections on Saturday, February 14, claiming that they are too busy with operations in the North East. The commission is expected to table this position, which has created a huge dilemma for it, at meetings planned for this morning with registered political parties, civil society groups and its state commissioners before it announces its final decision on whether or not to go ahead with the elections. While all national attention was focused on last Thursday’s meeting of the National Council of State which failed to reach a consensus on whether or not the polls should be shifted, the military service chiefs had already advised INEC in writing to postpone the polls for at least six weeks.  The letter, Weekly Trust learnt, was sent to INEC chairman Profess...