Television Nigerian

On Sunday, Governor of Oyo State, ‘Seyi Makinde, urged professionals and religious leaders to get involved in politics in order to improve governance and promote sanity in the political system.

The governor made the charge while speaking at a thanksgiving service hosted by Reverend P.F Owa of the Christ Revival Miracle Church in Molete, Ibadan.

He claims that the first time he attended church was on September 20, 2018, but that he returned three weeks before the election and that the Pastor prayed with him in the auditorium.

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Mr Taiwo Adisa, the governor’s Chief Press Secretary, quoted Makinde as saying, “We knelt here and prayed, and God answered the prayers.”

“You prayed for me and prophesied that I would win the election after I worshipped here, and I did, to the glory of God.”

Even though he has not been able to return to the church two years after his victory, he claims that the man of God has never chastised him for not doing so.

“It’s been two years since I’ve come here to worship, despite the fact that it’s always been on my to-do list to return and appreciate.

“For those two years, you didn’t go on the air to say that despite prayers helping me win an election, I didn’t come back to thank the church.

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“However, some people have claimed that they were the ones who contributed to the victory. Some have even claimed that I used and dumped them,” the governor continued.

He thanked the pastor and the people of the state for their unwavering support and prayers over the last two years for his administration.
“As a result, I thank you all, the Pastor, and the entire congregation. I am grateful that, despite the fact that I have not attended this church in two years, you have continued to pray for my administration.

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“Aside from Thanksgiving, I’d like to say a couple of things. Pastor Moji Alawiye, the special visitor, expressed concern about those who will build our nation during her speech. The secret is that you, as God’s children, must participate in politics and governance.

“Yes, it’s a difficult task because the political landscape is tainted. We don’t want to be associated with nonbelievers, but we can’t build a nation without dealing with them. And the Bible contains an example of this.

“Look at what Eli’s son did to the temple, but Samuel was in the same place, and God called him out to complete the task He had for him. The same thing happened to Joseph; he had dreamed and seen all of his elder brothers bow before him, but he was sold as a slave and ended up becoming Egypt’s Prime Minister as a result of his journey.

“As a result, don’t entertain any fears in your head. Nigeria will be great again if we go out there and participate in politics.”

The governor explained that the road leading to the Church was in poor condition, promising to instruct the South East Local Government Council to repair it so that users could easily access it.

“When I first came here to worship, I noticed how bad the road leading to this church was, and it is still bad. This church is under the jurisdiction of the South East Local Government, and I’ve brought the Chairman of the Local Government, Pastor Alawode, to see for himself,” he said.

When asked about the politics of 2023, the governor said that all he wants is for God’s will to be done, just as he prayed for in 2019.

“One of the pastors mentioned the first and second tenures while praying. So, in 2019, I came out to tell the people that I wanted to be governor, but I prayed to God that only His will be done.

“And now I’m not sure if it’s even God’s will for me to seek or push out for a second term. The only prayer I want you to pray for me is that God’s will be done in my life alone.

“On a final note, as children of God, let us participate in politics and governance. This nation will get what it deserves because of our participation.”

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Earlier in his sermon, Rev. Peter Folorunso Owa, the founder and president of the Christ Revival Miracle Church, praised Governor Makinde’s administration for its tremendous achievements over the last two years, adding that the governor is doing something new in Oyo State.

He stated that Nigeria requires prayers, and that no problem or challenge can be solved without them.

“We are truly proud of God’s wisdom that guides your decision-making in governance, which has brought tremendous achievement and joy to Oyo state,” he said.

“Prayers are what our country requires at this time. God will hear us if we pray and live a righteous life, and He will deliver this nation from its various problems.”

Mrs Olubamiwo Adeosun, Secretary to the State Government, Hon. Segun Ogunwuyi, Chief of Staff, Mr Akinola Ojo, Commissioner for Finance, Mr Akinola Ojo, Commissioner for Justice and Attorney-General, Prof. Oyelowo Oyewo, and a host of other government officials attended the thanksgiving ceremony.

By Michael Attah

Three weeks today; precisely, it’s more than three clear weeks, after the House of Representatives gave its verdict of a clean bill of health to the management of the North East Development Commission (NEDC), over alleged financial heist at the commission involving a whopping sum of N100 billion.

Surprisingly, but not unexpected, the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and its allied vuvuzelas who led the defamatory assaults are silent. They unconscionably blew the false alarm bordering on spurious, mendacious, politically -motivated and malicious allegations on the commission’s management.

But the CSOs have been humbled with the House’s exonerative verdict on the commission and so, have now chosen the wise path in the wisdom of “silence is golden.” Had the verdict turned against the NEDC management, the fury of hell would not have contained their loud rantings.

The NEDC’s management led by the Managing Director, Alhaji Mohammed Goni Alkali, a stickler to standards, anti-corruption czar, a renowned evangelist of transparency and accountability in public service was alarmed and astonished with the bogus allegations raised against him and members of the NEDC management team in July 2020. But he was unperturbed!

As a first reaction to the spurious garbage spilled by an obscure group, North East Vanguard for Good Governance (NEVGG), Alkali, an astute public administrator and world-class manager of human and material resources, retorted calmly, “Nobody gave us up to N100 billion; I really don’t know how they got that figure.” Armed with this truth and confidence in his leadership of the commission, Alkali was ever willing to appear before the National Assembly Committee to respond to the allegations and redeem the image of the commission from politically-induced brickbats.

But the figure of N100 billion, within span of barely a year, alleged on Alkali by his adversaries, who accused him of corrupt practices was an amount too huge to be ignored by anybody. A synopsis of the allegations fingered Alkali in embezzlement, high handedness, abuse of office, over inflation of contracts, awards of non-existent contracts, massive contract splitting and flagrant disregard for due process or procurement laws in the award of contracts among others. So, the news went viral instantaneously.

Recount that President Muhammadu Buhari had signed the “Northeast Development Commission Bill” into law in October 2017, as a replacement for other existing support initiatives such as the Presidential Initiative on Northeast and the Victims Support Fund for victims of insurgency in the Northeast. The NEDC board of management was later inaugurated in May 2019, with Alhaji Mohammed Goni Alkali as the Managing Director.

But early in July 2020, a year later, NEVGG generated, fabricated, and publicized damaging allegations against the NEDC management and bluntly called for the sack of the NEDC boss and its management for the abuse of the funds voted for the settlement, rehabilitation and reconstruction of the Northeast region ravaged by Boko Haram terrorists.

And the allegations whirled instantly because it coincided with the frenzy of the probe of the over N1trillion massive and multi-layered financial sleazes at the management of NDDC, another commission with a mandate to spearhead infrastructural development in the Niger Delta region.

Therefore, the House of Representatives picked up the gauntlet to investigate the alleged financial heist, two weeks later in the same month of July 2020. The issue was brought before the House in a motion by the Minority Leader, Hon.Ndudi Elumelu and it was unanimously adopted. The House mandated its Committees on Finance, Procurement and the NEDC to meticulously investigate these allegations and submit its findings to the Green Chamber, thus setting the stage for the investigation of the commission.

But the truth deliberately undermined by the petitioners ‘was that when the management of the NEDC commenced operations in 2019 upon inauguration, the released take-off grant was N10 billion only, though N45 billion was the entire sum budgeted for the commission in 2019. Other piecemeal releases later cumulatively pegged the total figure released to the NEDC at N25 billion in the 2019 fiscal year. And for the 2020 budget, fresh funds had not been released to the commission at the time the allegations were raised and mainly due to the exigencies of Covid-19 pandemic.

Therefore, the figure of N100 billion bandied as allegedly embezzled sounded hollow and betrayed the concealed intention of the petitioners as conspiracists after the malicious persecution of Alhaji Mohammed Goni Alkali and the management of NEDC. So, the antagonists of Alkali only stirred the honest nest with such damning frivolities for selfish reasons.

But come to think of it, a peep into the books of account of the commission displays an impressive adherence to every financial management, disbursement and procurement law, which Alkali was accused of violating flagrantly. The attacks on his person were carefully crafted.

For instance, Alkali was alleged to have conspired with the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajia Sadiya Umar-Farouk to withdraw and squander N5 billion for the procurement of vehicles for the military without approval of the NEDC board. But the decision to support the military operations in Northeast did not emanate from the NEDC management, but it came from recommendations of a communique of a Security Summit of the relevant stakeholders in Maiduguri, which pressed on the NEDC to support logistics for the Military.

And the NEDC board too was duly informed and gave its nod; but the amount expended for the purchase of vehicles was less than N5 billion as alleged. But since it was over the approval limits of the commission, due process was adhered, as the matter was referred to the ministerial tender’s board to the Bureau for Public Procurement. And advice was sought in the process and the approval granted.

Interestingly too, the probe established nowhere where Alkali neither committed funds of the commission to acquire landed properties in Abuja, Kaduna or Maiduguri nor paid himself monthly salaries and allowances amounting to N8.5 million, without recourse to the Salaries and Wages Commission as alleged by the petitioners. Thus, the otherwise serious investigation of the NEDC management over misappropriated N100 billion and abuse of procurement laws morphed into a comic show.

In the NASS correspondence with ref. No; NASS/CAN/35/Vol.1/153, dated July 8, 2021, to the NEDC Managing Director, it communicated the decisions of the House of Representatives resolutions on the probe of the alleged misappropriation of 100 billion as follows; (a) Commend the North East Development Commission for their due diligence in the execution of the projects; and also, directed the management to hasten to utilize other released, but unspent funds in the commission’s custody.

In clear terms, the House of Representatives found out the truth and absolved the NEDC Managing Director, Alhaji Mohammed Goni Alkali and his management team of any complicity in the handling of the commission’s finances. Therefore, the NEDC under the leadership of Alkali remains a doyen of accountability and transparency in the execution of projects, as it seeks to ameliorate the sufferings and pains of people of the Northeast region devastated by more than 10 years of Boko Haram insurgency.

Attah is a legislative staff at the National Assembly and wrote this piece from Abuja.

By Israel Abiodun

Like a half-drunk arousing from a stupor, Amnesty International is finally exiting a self-inflicted reverie by returning to the trenches against the Nigerian state and the institutions entrusted with maintaining the country’s sovereignty, law enforcement and military agencies. It is an assignment at which it failed in the past and has apparently also failed in this instance even before it has properly relaunched itself.

The international human rights monitoring non-governmental organization was apparently dazed by a quick series of events: the former service chiefs left office on excellent notes and got higher national assignments contrary to its expected outcome from the campaign of calumny against them during their tenure; the legacy of these former service chiefs was sustained by their successors, which means terrorists that are Amnesty International’s clients continued to receive heavy punishment at the hands of government forces; and against the lies told to block Nigeria from acquiring military hardware, the country successfully bought attack aircrafts that has further tipped the equation against terrorists.

Caught out in this manner, the folks at Amnesty International, possibly hard pressed for a strategy to roll back the progress recorded by the government against the terrorists it has always been sympathetic to, the NGO dug up its old style book and resorted to a worn tactic of presenting Nigeria’s military and law enforcement organizations as being tools in the hands of a government it has done everything to cast as repressive and murderous against the citizens.

A first manifestation of this was the publication of its trademark hasty report titled “Nigeria: At least 115 people killed by security forces in four months in country’s Southeast”. The story touted that ‘“The evidence gathered by Amnesty International paints a damning picture of ruthless excessive force by Nigerian security forces in Imo, Anambra and Abia states,” said Osai Ojigho, Country Director at Amnesty International.’

That report, scanty on facts and heavy on conjectures, tenuously attempted to present all those in the figures it cited as innocent. The impression it created was that member of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a designated terrorist organization, and its militant wing, the Eastern Security Network (ESN), were innocent of the carnage they claimed responsibility for in the southeast. Perhaps Amnesty International has a database of all IPOB/ESN members against which it was able to verify the identities of the casualties from the security operations against terrorists in the region and that it was also able to crosscheck its database about the membership of the 500 persons it reported as arrested.

It used the testimony of two persons, with a mix of faceless and nameless persons thrown in, as a basis for establishing the innocence of the people that were unfortunately killed or arrested in these operations. This alone is reason to be suspicious of whatever figures Amnesty International throws around – a population sample that is statistically flawed and conclusions that are overly reliant on anecdotal reckonings that it makes no efforts to substantiate.

What should set the alarm bells tolling for any conscientious Nigeria, however, is this organization’s subtle but insidious pitching of citizens against each other by creating the impression that the terrorists, their innocent victims, and the government forces that are protecting innocent citizens from terrorists are different breeds of humans that should be accorded different level of human rights. The group overly focused on the killing and arrest of suspected terrorists while glossing over other fundamentals.

Its reports said _”Nigeria’s government has responded with a heavy hand to killings and violence widely attributed to the armed group calling itself Eastern Security Network (ESN), the armed wing of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a pro-Biafra movement. According to government officials, the ESN killed dozens of security operatives and attacked at least ten public buildings, including prisons and police stations, from January to June. In response, security forces comprising military, police, and Department of State Services (DSS) have killed dozens of gunmen, as well as civilians, where attacks have been committed.”_

Thus, Amnesty International accused the government of responding to terrorist acts “with a heavy hand” while it glossed over the fact that those killed were mostly during gunfights that ensued when they attacked security formations in the southeast. It trivialized that civilian that refused to subscribe to IPOB/ESN’s preference for violence were summarily executed by these terrorists in the goriest manner. It equally attempted to be clever by half when it admitted that “the ESN killed dozens of security operatives and attacked at least ten public buildings, including prisons and police stations, from January to June” yet was critical of the response to these crimes. Can Amnesty International name one country that would allow crimes of this magnitude against the state and citizens to be treated with kids’ gloves?

In what could possibly be the most perverted instance of revisionism recorded in the year 2021, Amnesty International flippantly dismissed the casualty on government side as “dozens of security operatives”. For the avoidance of doubt, The Brigade Commander of 34 Artillery Brigade, Obinze, Owerri, Imo State, Brig. Gen. Raymond Utsaha reported that IPOB/ESN “gunmen had killed 78 police officers, 38 army officers, five Naval officers, seven Air Force officers, 15 Nigeria Security and Civil Defence officers, 31 community policing members and over 100 innocent citizens in the five states of the South-East region since the unrest (January to the first week of June 2021).” Who should Nigeria hold responsible for these atrocities? Would the criminals, bold enough to commit these kinds of atrocities, allow themselves to be taken in without a fight or alive for that matter?

The reality, irrespective of the spin by Amnesty International, is that the more than 262 people that IPOB/ESN killed under the franchise of “unknown gunmen” were Nigerians, they had names and identities with families and loved ones that have remained in mourning. It is appalling that this so-called human rights NGO has behaved in a manner that confirms that it places terrorists above these deceased Nigerians in terms of value and the need to safeguard their lives. It is an irresponsible act of misplacing human right monitoring and reporting that the entire world should rise and condemn.

Of greater concern is the long-term damage that Amnesty international is attempting to inflict with the questionable report, as it has done in the past. Its mainstream and social media circuits have already picked up this piece of trash without interrogation and are running with it to perpetrate the fable of “a repressive government” while proxy and franchise NGOs are already keening on the report in the hope of hobbling the government to give free reign to IPOB/ESN’s desired reign of terror. A whole lot of pseudo activists, who are in the real sense opposition politicians and crises entrepreneurs, are already running all over the place as end users of Amnesty International’s poisoned chalice.

It is thus pertinent to caution those celebrating the Amnesty International’s report that there is absolute need for circumspection. The report from this organization, like many before it, is not meant to serve the interest of Nigeria. Rather, it is geared as part of a larger effort to promote chaos in the country by petrifying personnel of law enforcement agency into not being willing to fight terrorism so that terrorists can gain the upper hand and consequently achieve the breakup of Nigeria: by now it should be clear to all that Amnesty International has routed for Boko Haram/ISWAP to form an Islamic (Sharia) republic in the northeast of the country, IPOB/ESN in the southeast and who knows what else they will back in other parts of the country while exploiting ethno-sectarian schisms that were never there prior to its deep state operation in Nigeria.

Let us all agreed that Amnesty International’s human rights campaign in Nigeria is misplaced to the extent that it has deployed its work for diabolical purposes that are against the interest of Nigeria. We should tell this organization to cease and desist so that government forces can restore normalcy in our security situation.

Abiodun wrote this piece from Ibadan.