By Adesina Soyooye

Hours after former Secretary  to the Government of the Federation, SGF, Babachir Lawal, Chairman of the Northern Christians Caucus in Politics, endorsed the Presidential ambition of  Peter Obi, candidate of the Labour Party, some members of the Caucus have tackled him.

Lawal had, in an interview with Channels TV on Thursday, November 24, 2022, said that the Caucus has decided to throw its weight behind Obi.

The Caucus which includes many prominent Northern Politicians of the Christian Faith became very active after the Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC,  Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, a Muslim, chose the former Governor of Borno State, Senator Kashim Shettima, another Muslim, as his running mate.

Members of the Caucus,  strongly protested, as did Christians all over the Country, the same-Faith ticket.The members termed it an insult and a satanic ticket.They said they would never back a Tinubu-Shettima ticket, and would, with time, announce their choice.

But on Thursday, Lawal, while being interviewed by Channels Television, announced the decision of the Caucus to back the Obi-Datti ticket.

Instructively, on Wednesday, November 23, 2022, a number of publications had quoted Lawal as saying the Group was backing Atiku Abubakar, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. He was quoted to have said the Caucus had a discussion with Atiku, he granted them their requests, and so, they decided to back him.

But on Thursday, November 24, the story changed. However, the Executive members of the Caucus, led by its Secretary, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, disowned Lawal.

In a statement signed by all of them on same Thursday, they said Lawal’s endorsement of Obi was hasty. They posited that neither Lawal as their Chairman, nor any other member, has the right to announce the backing of a Presidential candidate by the Caucus without due consultation.

Following is the full text of their statement.

“The former cabinet secretary announced his support for the Labour Party candidate in a controversial statement on Thursday.

“We want to draw the attention of the general public to the recent position canvassed by our Chairman, Engr B D Lawal, as the position of our Group.

“We wish to state that necessary consultations have been concluded, and based on manifestly unassailable empirical data, the group is poised to adopt a position which will be made known to the public at an interfaith event to be held very soon.

“We wish to state that necessary consultations have been concluded, and based on manifestly unassailable empirical data, the group is poised to adopt a position which will be made known to the public at an interfaith event to be held very soon.

“Also, it suffices to say that no one in the group including the Chairman has been mandated to speak to the public about our position at this material time.

“Based on our modus Operandi, our position was meant to be presented to the general public at the event above referred to. That has not changed.

“Consequently, the decision to endorse a particular candidate and the statement credited to the chairman are soley the decision and views  of the Chairman which he is absolutely entitled to but not that of the group.

“We hope this statement clears all the querries most of us have been inundated with on this all important subject matter.

“Signatories:

1. Rt Hon Yakubu Dogara
2. HE, Simon Achuba
3. Hon Albert Atiwurcha
4. Prof Doknan Sheni
5. Mela A. Nunge, SAN
6. Gen Ishaya Bauka Rtd
7. Prof Ibrahim Haruna
8. Mrs Leah Olusiyi

November 24, 2022

By Charles Igbo

Anambra State Governor, Professor Charles Soludo  on Thursday, blamed everybody but himself for the very untidy relationship between him and the Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, which became public a few days ago.

The bad relationship was blown open by Soludo, who in a long essay, accused Obi of deceiving Ndigbo when he knows he would never win the Presidential race. He said come 2023, Obi may not even take the third position. And, he said much more. Before this, he had, in an interview with Channels Television, dismissed Obi’s investment for the State, when Obi was Governor, as no use. He said they were inconsequential. Taken on by Obi’s followers, Soludo wrote the long essay where he waved Obi away from the Presidential race and called him a joker.

Soludo’s inexplicable essay attracted outrage, especially, from the Igbo race and Obi’s fans. Not a few people disparaged him for deliberately de-marketing Obi.

However, on Thursday, November 24, when the two men met for the first time since Soludo’s essay, they hugged like long lost brothers.

Both had met at St Patrick’s Cathedral Awka at a Mass to mark the 70th birthday of Most Revd. Paulinus Ezeokafor. Obi was seated before Soludo entered. As he sat down, he noticed Obi and quickly went to him, greeted him and welcomed him to Awka. They hugged.

Speaking on their reaction to each other in the Church, Soludo said people were surprised that both of them hugged. He disclosed that they spoke twice the previous night -Wednesday. Soludo blamed everybody but himself for the rift between him and Obi, and said some people tried to blow it out of proportion. He then revealed that the two of them would meet to iron things out.

The Governor, also, denied receiving the sum of $28m bribe to throw obstacles at Obi’s Presidential ambition.

He described their meeting in a Church as divine, and the day as a special day.

The Labour Party Presidential Candidate, Mr. Peter Obi has reacted to the 2022 National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) report, saying that it shows “how badly Nigeria is doing in terms of investing in the wellbeing of the people”.

In a series of tweets Obi noted that roughly 133 million Nigerians are multi-dimensionally poor, representing about 63% of Nigerians.

According to the LP presidential flag-bearer, although most of those affected are in the North,  multidimensional poverty is widespread across the country, noting that the report provides some sobering facts.

“First, the rural part of Nigeria is trapped in abject power; second, we are leaving our children, miserable and uneducated. 27 percent of school-age children are out of school and poor, 29 percent of all school-aged children are not attending school, and 94 percent of out of school children are very poor.”

Obi in the tweet also queried, “What future does Nigeria have without educated and happy children? What violent, nasty, and poor future are we building with such terrible lack of investment in our children”

He noted that “Multidimensional Poverty Index is the best mirror of failure of governance in the country” noting that “In spite of earning trillions in oil revenue, in spite of borrowing trillion naira for infrastructure development, almost half of Nigerians is poor and close to two-third of Nigerians do not have access to basic sanitation, access to basic education, lack basic nutrition and do not visit hospitals”

Obi described the situation as “terrible disgrace and disservice to a country with our tremendous natural and human resource”

He said that the political economy of this report should be made clear to every Nigerian voter because what it simply means is that government is not working.

“It means that the state is working for the few, and not for all the citizens of the country. It means that the future is terrible for every Nigerian- young or old, rich or poor.  The trending of multidimensional poverty if not arrested immediately will damage state capacity and effectiveness and therefore disarray economic and social policies that will reverse the trend in the future.”

Painting further the gloomy picture of the report Obi noted, “If we combine atrocious fiscal decline with grand and pervasive corruption and the level of incompetence of public leadership to such generalized poverty, we will end up a completely collapsed state, thrown back to state of nature”

He remarked that unless the situation is arrested, “With our population estimated to reach 400 million in the next 28 years, Nigeria would become a security risk to the entire Sub-Saharan Africa.

“This report tells a story of the failure of economic policy of government. The failure of government to invest in basic social and human infrastructure and the lack of commitment to the wellbeing of ordinary Nigerians, especially those in the rural communities is heart-breaking.

“How on earth is it that 63 percent of Nigerians do not have access to the most basic sanitation and nutrition? How come 63 percent of our citizens cannot approach a clinic or health center within two hours? The World Bank assessment of poverty in Nigeria in 2022 makes it clear that additional 5.1m Nigerians became poor this year.

The LP candidate noted that with the report, even if there was  no pandemic and the war in Ukraine, Nigeria would still not have been able to  reduce its poverty rate by any percentage because the policy administration has no impact on poverty.

“This is a clear indictment of the APC government and its elitist policy administration. It shows a failure to appreciate the need to refocus on social and economic policies that improve the access of the poor to basic services. It is the result of the old idea of development as contract and procurement of poorly managed big projects that feed into the bureaucracy of corruption.

He said that Labor Party offers a different approach to development that emphasizes the wellbeing of the people and ensures that policies and resources are targeted at materially improving the wellbeing of everyone, not just political leaders and their cronies.

Obi said that, “It is now time to end politics as usual, time to disband the army of greedy and self-serving politicians in Abuja and elect those who are connected to the people and those who share the pains and deprivations of the working and unemployed youths, abandoned women and deprived children across Nigeria”

He promised to disrupt this trajectory of failure and wickedness in high places across Nigeria and give Nigerians back their country so that every child will have access to good school, good drinking water, good sanitation, good healthcare, and their parents good jobs and the joy of being a citizen of a country that is lifting millions from poverty into shared prosperity.

“If China lifted 750 million from poverty in about 20 years and if India reduced poverty from 50 percent to 20 percent in about 15 years, we could do even better. We can wipe off multidimensional poverty in less than a decade. Lets do it together, let us end the corruption and incompetence with our votes” he concluded.