5 ISSUES BUHARI MUST TACKLE UPON RETURN
All is obviously not well with the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC). The party seems to have been engulfed by internal wrangling which, if not properly and perhaps urgently handled, may spell doom for it in the coming elections
plan to reject Magu as chairman of the EFCC. The Senate president explained that Magu’s rejection was prompted by a report from the Department of State Services (DSS) among other issues, emphasising that the decision to reject Magu’s confirmation was in the interest of democracy. 4. Boko Haram resurgence: President Muhammadu Buhari must be worried that Boko Haram militants who his administration was hitherto pleased to have degraded, have staged a comeback. The administration had last December announced that the Boko Haram stronghold in the Sambisa forest had been captured.
A fortnight ago, the governor of Borno State, Kassim Shettima, while speaking to State House reporters after a closed-door meeting with Acting President Yemi Osinbajo and the service chiefs, cautioned that though the terrorists had been sufficiently decimated, their capacity for attacks should not be underrated.
The service chiefs have, in compliance with the directive handed down by Osinbajo, relocated to the command centre in Maiduguri.
In spite of the pockets of attacks in Borno State within the last one month, the Defence Headquarters denied a Boko Haram resurgence.
Nigerians would like to see how President Muhammadu Buhari will fast track the rescue of the officials of the University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID) and the staff of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) abducted recently by the sect while carrying out oil exploration research in the Lake Chad Basin Frontier Exploration.
Osinbajo had last weekend directed the military and all security agencies to intensify counter-terror efforts in Borno State in order to have a strong control and secure lives and property. He charged them to continue the search and rescue missions to locate and free all the remaining abducted persons as soon as possible, “using all available and expedient means in the circumstances.”
He was said to have assured that despite the resurgence of terrorist attacks in Borno, “the federal government is not only on top of the situation, but will define the end of these atrocities by both winning the war and winning the peace in the north-east.”
All is obviously not well with the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC). The party seems to have been engulfed by internal wrangling which, if not properly and perhaps urgently handled, may spell doom for it in the coming elections.
Things seem to be falling apart at the various state chapters of the APC. In Bauchi State, Governor Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, are apparently not on the same wavelength at the moment. In Kaduna State, Governor Nasir el-rufai and Senator Shehu Sani appear to have poised for ‘war’.
The battle of supremacy between Kano State Governor Abdullahi Ganduje and his predecessor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, is far from over. In Rivers State, the recent party “restructuring” which the former governor of the state and Minister of Transportation Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, reportedly did with his own political caucus is generating ripples at the state chapter of the party.
There are rumours that a former vice president and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Kwankwaso and other bigwigs of the ruling party may return to the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) as they were reported to have been approached. Atiku, while speaking at the second Inter Party Advisory Council of Nigeria (IPAC) annual conference recently, flayed the failure by the All Progressives Congress to organise statutory meetings for its organs. He also observed that lack of internal democracy had made the APC and other political parties “undemocratic.”
Osinbajo had on Wednesday kick-started what appeared to be a peace deal process in the All Progressives Congress with a meeting with state chairmen of the party.