THE TRUMP VERBAL INDISCRETION by Frank ofili

Trumpism is okay but if it is inconsistent with state policy and established norm of statecraft and international conduct, you become a joke.

Our President was recuperating jejely (pardon the pidgin) in the UK when US President Donald Trump invited him to Washington. Buhari did not beg to be invited. Donald Trump invited him out of his own volition at a time he (Trump) was obviously seeking credible world leaders to line up behind his administration following the controversy surrounding the less-than-credible way he emerged as President of the United States.

Early this year, Buhari honoured the invitation. Trump received him. Both had a press world conference. During the press conference, Trump was effusive, enthusiastic and obviously impressed with Buhari. He even described Buhari as a true world leader.

Here his opening remark during the world press conference “Thank you very much. Thank you. Today, I’m honoured to host President Buhari of Nigeria at the White House, right here in the beautiful Rose Garden. President Buhari, I want to thank you very much for traveling to Washington for these important discussions. It’s a true pleasure to welcome you to our nation’s capital. Nigeria is the largest democracy in Africa……As I conveyed to President Buhari in our discussions, the United States deeply values and appreciates Nigeria’s role as a strong, democratic leader in the region…..”

Shortly after Trump hosted Buhari in the White House, the US President sent his former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, to Nigeria as a follow-up to earlier Trump-Buhari meet.

And now I hear the same Trump has made some uncomplimentary remark about not wanting to meet our President whom he allegedly described as “lifeless”.

One thing is clear. Buhari didn't beg to be invited to the US. Donald Trump invited him by his own free will - of all African leaders, he chose to invite Buhari, the "lifeless" one first.

Americans should genuinely be concerned about the insecurities and inconsistencies of their President. It is these twin-attributes that are responsible for why Russia president Putin has boxed him into a corner from where he is unable to extricate himself.

And if you are a Nigerian and you are not outraged at Trump's verbal indiscretion, then I question your patriotism.

When The Economist of London allegedly called our former President, Goodluck Jonathan, an ineffectual buffoon, I condemned it in strong terms in a Facebook post despite not being a great fan of Jonathan. I also urged the Federal Government to demand an apology from The Economist and if not given, to banish the international magazine from Nigeria.

Some things are beyond local politics. Our internal differences notwithstanding, I could not possibly stand anybody calling my president, past or present, an ineffectual buffoon, the same way I cannot stand US President Donald Trump describing our President, Muhammadu Buhari, as lifeless.

It is not about politics; it is about respect for our country and her people. We have leadership challenges, no doubt, but we deserve our respect, even from Donald Trump. The Federal Government should condemn in strong terms Trump's verbal indiscretion.

FRANKOFILI.NET

JUST LAYING OUT FACTS, An Article copied from Mike Osheku's ( a political Analyst) Write-ups

Let it be clear to everyone that if we use our pen to sow the seed of discord, our lives will surely harvest the fruit of conflict. We have no other country apart from Nigeria. If we set it on fire, we shall all be consumed by the flame of ignominy.
Rwandan crisis which later became a genocide started with the ink of some writers like or a so called "Ibrahim Bunu".
On what the writer put together, it is hypocritical not to mention that the Chief of Defense Staff (CDS) who supretends over the three major arms of the Nigerian Army, the Nigerian Navy and the Nigerian Air Force, General Gabriel Olonisakin is Xtian and a well known pastor in RCCG. The Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Ibok Ekwe Ibas is a Xtian too. Both of them appointed by Buhari are very senior members of the nation's security team.

There is no illusion about the race to 2019. The goats are gathering once again, spewing hatred and causing division just to regain access to the yam taken away from them. All of them, known criminals!!!

The team PMB/PYO based its campaign on the tripod of SEC. Security, Economy and Corruption. The wailers told us the lopsided composition of the National Security Team headed by Buhari as the Commander in Chief but they failed to make noise about the equally lopsided composition of the National Economic Team headed by Prof. Osinbajo because it doesn't support their narratives. Other members of the economic team include:
👉🏻 Udo Udoma- Minister for budget and planning.
👉🏻 Kemi Adeosun- Minister of Finance
👉🏻 Okechukwu Enalemah- Minister of Trade, Industry and Investment
👉🏻 Audu Ogbe- Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development
👉🏻 Godwin Emefiele- CBN Governor
👉🏻 Oluyemi Dipeolu- Special Adviser to the President on Economic Matters
👉🏻 Lai Mohammed- Minister of Information and Culture.
Expanded
👉🏻 Tunde Fowler- Chairman/CEO of FIRST
👉🏻 Uche Orji- MD/CEO, Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA)
👉🏻 Ben Akabueze- DG, Budget Office
👉🏻 Patience Oniha- DG, Debt Management Office
👉🏻 Ambassador Osakwe- Chief Trade Negotiator for the Nation
👉🏻 Yewande Sadiku- Executive Secretary, Nigeria Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC)

Aside from Lai Mohammed, the National Economic Team is made up of Christians and mainly from the South! We have not seen any Muslim crying over this not even the Northerners. What is important to well meaning Nigerians is to see a prosperous economy. Despite the comatose economy bequeathed by the immediate past administration, we have started seeing restoration leading to economic prosperity for all.

On the 3rd leg of the tripod, Buhari established a Presidential Advisory Committee on Corruption (PACAC). Membership of the Committee include:
👉🏻 Prof. Itse Sagay, SAN - Chairman
👉🏻 Prof. Femi Odekunle
👉🏻 Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye
👉🏻 Prof. Etannibi Alamika
👉🏻 Prof. Sadik Isah Radda

Of the lots, Prof. Sadik Isah is the only Northern/Muslim in the Committee yet we do not hear our Muslim and Northern brothers shouting at the president for marginalization. All they want is to see looters in jail and to never allow any goat near the National yam again.

Of the 39 members of the Federal Executive Council, 20 are Christians including SGF, Boss Mustapha and HOS, Winifred Eyo-Ita.

I decidedly come up with this write up to debunk the message and cry of marginalization of Christians/Southerners by Buhari administration and by extension the APC administration.

Nigeria returned to democratic rule in 1999. That's 19 years of uninterrupted democracy. Out of the 19 years, Christian/Southerner (Obasanjo & Jonathan) had been President of the nation for 14 years while Muslim/Northerner (Yar' Adua/Buhari) has been in the saddle of leadership for 5 years. Again, out of the 19 years, PDP was in power for 16 bountiful but wasteful years while APC has just completed 3 years in lean period with manifest prudent management. If Nigeria is in sorry state today, I think people should know where to beam their searchlight on.

The die is cast. 2019 is a choice between darkness and light, it is a choice between stealing is not corruption and stealing is corruption, it is a choice between retrogression and progress. Instead of putting forward their 1st eleven they are whipping up sentiment, causing ethnic and religious division, busy spewing hatred and hate messages across the land, lying over non-existent issue, making inflamatory statements in the media, posting and sharing genocidal videos of past years including events in foreign nations on social media platforms all because of their pathological hatred for our 1st eleven. We are not bothered, they employed similar tactics with greater ferocity and full financial weight of the state behind them in 2015. What happened? The will of God triumphed.

The battle has been declared, pitch your tent.

Author Unknown

THE DECEPTION CALLED DEFECTION by SHABA Mafu

Nigerian politics is replete with lots of abracadabra. In the Nigerian context, it is a business for the rich where the area of investment is primarily determined by the Returns on Investment. The politicians like the conventional businessman looks for the most fertile ground or opportunities of investment by deliberating undermining who they were actually meant to serve. The adage that says in politics, “there is no permanent friend but permanent interest” has derailed and destroyed the ‘evil’ concept called democracy as practiced in Nigeria.

Presently, the Nigeria polity is witnessing heavy traffic of defections from one political party to the other. Without intent to go into details, I will do a random illumination of the happenings in the Nigerian polity. In the build up to the 2015 general elections, the then opposition party (having formed an alliance with other political parties) and coming up finally to become the All Progressives Congress (APC), successfully wrestled power from the then ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party. To form a legal basis upon which defections from the ruptured party (a party riddled by massive corruption and ineptitude by the then President Goodluck Jonathan-led administration), the “newPDP) was crafted. In order not to lose seats at all levels, those decampees quickly cited that there was a crack in the political party, and as result of that they had legitimate grounds to decamp from it. Thus, many quickly began to decamp to their supposedly new found fertile ground called the All Progressives Congress. There and then, they decamped in their droves. The APC was obviously happy that their party was headed for a breakthrough in the 2015 general elections. They indeed clinched their victory to become the party in gobernment and were actually set to effect their much touted CHANGE which was their mantra. They did not know that their party was only ballooned by political egrets that would lead it to regrets in the course of time.

As time flew, and basically as the 2019 elections draw near, a period to the end of the first tenure of the APC presidency, many of the decampees from the hitherto rubbished PDP began to migrate to their “Home” like the cattle egrets who have no permanent place of abode but only prostitutes with the most conducive atmosphere for purely personal gains. The basic reason for the political migration by these egrets was because they were not either “carried along in the line of their duties”, or they were treated with “high-handedness” by the ruling APC, therefore not having political fulfillment. But the underlying reason was that they do not have the platform to fulfill their political ambition in the APC, which like harlots they rushed into a relationship with. They were allegedly not given automatic tickets, therefore having their hopes seriously dashed.

To also bake an excuse that would have a legal backing for their decamping, they had to replicate a make-belief crisis-ridden All Progressives Congress. Like the newPDP (nPDP) formed in 2015, these schemers came up with the Reformed APC (rAPC) as a faction of the ruling party, thereby giving an impression that the party was factionalized. Upon this, they perfected their defection plan and they began to fly away one after the other. Sincerely speaking, the reason for the decamping of these political harlots is basically to pursue self interest. It is neither for the interest of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) nor for the nation as widely touted. Those who are migrating to the APC are not also doing so for the best interest of the nation. There is basically no difference between those in the PDP and in the APC both at the present, and in the future of Nigerian politics. They are the same of the same.

In the angle of some who defected to the PDP from the APC, among who included the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar,  Alhaji Rabiu Kwakwanso etc, are all struggling to win the presidential ticket of their political party, the PDP, at the least. Different reasons have been adduced for their decamping, but the truth remains that their selfishness overrides the window-dressed excuses. By the time some of them fail to realize their ambition, they may further shamelessly decamp to other political party or even return to the much-hated APC (that is, if APC eventually wins the 2019 general elections) or may even choose to stick to their new party – the PDP, not because they have an iota of integrity but because they may be ashamed of hopping from one party to the other. Their stay may also be influenced by the time-table drawn by the party to favour their political ambition in the process of time as long as they maintain a high degree of loyalty within an expected period of time.

If these political hypocrites were sincere to themselves and to the people they were meant to serve, why couldn’t they stick to the parties they belong to, resolve any knotty issues, build the party, and by implication move the country forward? But their greed and avarice blindfold them to decamping and hopping in search of greener pastures. By all measurable standards, I rank Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State, and Alhaji Ahmed Bola Tinubu as men to be respected in terms of party loyalty, sagacity and political stability in the respective parties they belong to.. These political heavyweights can’t be compared with those who tore their membership cards and later turn around to seek for relevance in where they had once despised.

Democracy was said to be copied from America. In American politics, once election results are announced and the winner declared, political tension is downplayed while the interest of the nation and the citizens becomes sacrosanct. The major focus of all political parties, whether it is the party in government or the opposition party, remains the collective development of the American nation and its citizenry.

Until the level of political defections in Nigerian politics is grossly minimized and there are collaborative efforts to build Nigeria by the party in government and the opposition parties, we will continue to enjoy the proceeds of political hypocrisy and the gradual but sure death of a highly endowed nation like Nigeria. Let the electorates know that the current spate of defections is nothing but orchestrated deception. Let us tread with caution in the midst of these hoppers and egrets.

WHY SARAKI SHOULD ALSO LOSE HIS SEAT

source: Frank Ofili

A Faction, by definition, and by contemplation of law, is a situation where a political party has two parallel national executives.

That being so, it means in effect, that all those senators who defected from APC, including Senate President Bukola Saraki himself, ought to vacate their seats, or have their seats declared vacant in line with the provision of our electoral Act.

A mere intra-party disagreement does not amount to a faction. It is unfortunate that our democracy is being bastardized

By adopting that name, members of RAPC declared themselves an entirely different body from APC, and to that extent, ineligible to retain their seats in the NASS because they were not registered by INEC, neither did they contest election under the name RAPC.