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Blame neither Atiku nor Wike, Damagun, Bala cause of PDP crisis – Suswam
Gabriel Suswam, former Governor of Benue State, has argued that those blaming Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the party and Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) for the deepening crisis within the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are wrong.
Rather he wants them to channel such blames to Umar Damagun, Acting National Chairman of the party and Bala Muhammed, Governor of Bauchi State, who is the current Chairman of the PDP Governors Forum (PGF), whom he said were the ones stalling the full recovery of the party for their lack of leadership.
The former governor in two appearances at The Morning Show, a breakfast programme on ARISE NEWS, television network and Politics Today, a public affairs programme on Channels Television within the week, said without the insincerity of the two, neither Atiku nor Wike would have the ground to hold the party to ransom.
Hear him: “At my age and my stage, I won’t run away from such issues. PDP Acting National Chairman is one of those people. The PDP Governors Forum Chairman is one of the problems, because they have not been straight with us. So, I’m not shying away from that. I’m a member of PDP. I’ve sponsored PDP. I’ve been in this party since 1998 and have participated in its activities. I have contested seven elections under PDP, I won five and I lost two.
“So, there’s no way I’m going to shy away from what is happening. Damagun is the greatest problem we have in the party. But the chairman of the PDP Governors Forum should have guided him. He’s not doing his job. And that is why we’re here. As far as PDP is concerned, Bala Muhammed is the President, because governors are the one who are sponsoring the party now.
“They’re providing the money for the running of the party and Bala is the leader of that group. So, he is the leader of the party, so to speak. So, if he is not guiding the National Working Committee, then the buck stops on his table, then he’s one of the biggest problems that we have. It is not Atiku, it is not Wike. If Bala and Damagun have done what they should do, there’s no way that we’ll be have this type of shenanigans in the party.”
Suswam likened the PDP to a patient in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) that could either survive or die on a 50-50 chance, lamenting how a simple failure to show direction, unity, or honour in resolving internal conflicts, had cost the party greatly.
He particularly referred to the handling of issues related to Wike and the crisis in Rivers State, saying failure of the leaders to adhere to the agreement they reached with the FCT Minister on the matter which included the recognition of Samuel Anyanwu as National Secretary and the withdrawal of all court actions connected to state did not show honour on their part.
“I keep emphasising this without sounding like a broken record. I talked about leadership. Even at the family level, if we don’t have good leadership, that family is doomed. What has happened to PDP basically is that of leadership, lack of capacity on the part of the leadership of the party. They have had secret meetings. The FCT minister mentioned it. He said there was a meeting in Lagos, he was invited. They had an agreement in Lagos. There was another meeting in Abuja, in the house of a former Senate President, where those agreements were consolidated.
“If you are sincere to the people – and when we were called, former governors and current governors, about two weeks ago to a meeting, none of this was before us. Nobody knew that there were secret meetings where agreement was reached with the FCT minister. If you engage somebody in an agreement, you invite somebody and you engage him, it is only honourable that you honour the agreement. If you are not interested, why do that in the first place?
“So, I don’t blame the FCT Minister for what he’s saying. It’s dishonourable for me to call you and agree on something with you at my level, and then I reneged without reference to you. So I don’t blame him. It is the lack of capacity of the leadership. And the leadership has not been straight with party followers.”
Suswam, who particularly took issue with how the agreement ignored the decision of the South East PDP, which had already nominated a replacement National Secretary and communicated it to the party’s national secretariat, argued that such disregard revealed the extent to which the zone is being sidelined in party affairs.
“The South East as a bloc have met a couple of times, have decided that they want a new secretary of the party, have even nominated that person, have forwarded a letter to the headquarters of PDP.
“That is as a bloc. So if I’m going to engage in an agreement that would deviate from what the Southeast have done, they would have been involved. Or some of the stakeholders there would have been involved. I don’t think they were involved for them to take that decision because quite frankly, it’s confusing to me.”
Stressing that the pattern of exclusion and backroom dealings had not only fractured the party internally but also damaged public trust in its ability to serve as a credible opposition ahead of the 2027 elections, the former governor, also called out Umar Damagun, the PDP Acting National Chairman, accusing him of lack of sincerity.
Justice Muhammad Nuraddeen Bello of High Court sitting in Sokoto State has sentenced three men, including a foreign national, to death by hanging, after convicting them on charges bordering on terrorism and arms proliferation.
The convicts, Yusuf Muhammad (alias Sallau), a Nigerien; Jabbi Alhaji Yalle; and Kabiru Muhammad, were apprehended on 13th June, 2025, by the Department of State Services (DSS) Counter Terrorism Unit in connection with cross-border criminal activities bordering on arms trafficking and terrorism.
Bello, who found all three defendants guilty as charged and sentenced them to death by hanging, while also ordering the forfeiture of all monetary exhibits recovered from the convicts to the Federal Government, said: “The conviction is the latest in a series of successful prosecutions by the DSS in its sustained operations against terrorism and organised cross-border criminal networks across Nigeria.”
The sentencing is coming about two weeks after the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja sentenced each of the five suspects arrested on May 31, 2026, by the DSS for their involvement in the November 21, 2025, attack on St Mary’s Catholic School, Papiri, Niger State, to 25 years’ imprisonment.
Justice Binta Nyako, had handed down the judgment after the men, including two Nigeriens, pleaded guilty to all four terrorism-related charges, bordering on support for the commission of an act of terrorism, breaching both Section 16 of the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022, and the Firearms Act, were pressed against them.
According to Count One, the men were accused of jointly conspiring to assist a terrorist by agreeing and intentionally playing various roles towards conveying 15 AK 103 rifles as well as about 1,434 rounds of 7.62mm live ammunition from the Diffa region, Republic of Niger, to one Malam Ahmad, a member of the Boko Haram terrorist group based in Borgu, Niger State, and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 26(1) of the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022.
Primate Elijah Ayodele, is on the verge of coughing out a whopping N10billion, if he fails to offer unrestrained apology to Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, former Governor of Kano State within the next 24 hours, and retract his claim that the former Minister of Defence is bidding his time to betray Peter Obi, to whom he is to contest the 2027 presidential election as a running mate.
Without doing so, the controversial cleric, should be ready for a major court battle with the vice-presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), the platform on which the pair is to contest the election.
In a letter indicating a legal action against Ayodele of the INRI Evangelical Spiritual Church over defamatory remarks, Kwankwaso, through Magaji Mato Ibrahim, SAN & Co., his lawyers demanded an immediate retraction and apology from the cleric over the allegations.
Details of the letter, dated June 11, and unveiled through the X platform of the legal team, was based on a viral video recorded during a live-streamed church service, where the preacher made allegations targeting Kwankwaso’s integrity as Peter Obi’s running mate under the NDC.
Quoting the cleric as stating: “KWANKWASO IS A FAKE TO OBI, KWANKWASO WILL BETRAY YOU. KWANKWASO HAS BEEN PAID TO BE VICE PRESIDENT TO OBI AMONG OTHER LIBELOUS COMMENTS WHILE PRETENDING TO BE A PREACHER,” the former governor said the comments were unprovoked, grossly unfounded, and carefully designed to create a rift within the ranks of the political party and its supporters.
Handing Ayodele a 24-hour ultimatum to publish a full and unequivocal retraction across all social media platforms and news outlets with the same prominence as the original video, they also demanded a written undertaking that he would cease and desist from making any further malicious statements against their client, warning that failure to comply, would lead to full legal actions.
The letter stated: “We shall claim substantial damages to the tune of Ten Billion Naira and cost of the action on a full indemnity basis amongst other reliefs.”
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Tuesday demanded the immediate end to the exportation of minerals from countries in Africa in their raw forms, which he said had led to massive exploitation of the continent.
The President, told member countries of the African Minerals Strategy Group (AMSG), a forum of Ministers in charge of Mining and Solid Minerals on the continent to speak with one voice to promote, collective interests, ensure value addition, and prevent the continent from becoming merely a source of raw materials for the rest of the world.
As the Grand Patron of the group, chaired by Dele Alake, Nigeria’s Minister of Solid Minerals Development, gave the charge while receiving a delegation of AMSG in the State House, Tinubu told the delegation that the group had a critical role to play in strengthening Africa’s bargaining power in the global mineral market and ensuring that the continent derives maximum value from its natural resources.
His words: “ What we should do is avoid bureaucracy and deceit; we must put an end to exploitation. The rest of the world won’t mind if your country is a cesspit of dams and rubbish and excavates your raw materials without giving value.
“It is our responsibility to collaborate and cooperate to ensure that these metals and minerals bring value to us, bring technology to us, and we can do it. It is how much each country will put into the research, development and refinery. I don’t see reasons we cannot demand centralisation of that conversation somewhere on the continent. So why not utilise that in our research and development and knowledge-based economy to enhance the quality of life and bring prosperity to our people.”
Emphasising that Africa possessed enormous mineral wealth that should be strategically harnessed to drive industrialisation, create jobs and accelerate economic transformation across the continent, the President, said the era of exporting raw minerals without local processing and beneficiation must give way to a new model that encourages investment in local industries, technology transfer and the development of value chains that retain wealth within Africa.
Alake, who had earlier expressed gratitude to the President for his exemplary leadership under the Renewed Hope Agenda, said the gesture had shown support for Nigeria’s mineral sector, especially in the local value-addition and economic diversification drive, where artisanal miners are empowered.
He told the President: “You encouraged us to look at the focal point of the establishment of this group, which is to ensure that the African natural resources, especially with regards to minerals, critical matters, are localised, the beneficiation coming directly to Africans generally.
“You charged us that we should set our sails very high and ensure that local value addition is a pivot around which all the objectives of this organisation should revolve.
“So, sir, we have gone implemented your charge and we are quitted that today local value addition is reverberating all over Africa.”
He added that some member countries have gone ahead to ban the export of raw minerals.
He explained members of the body were in Abuja for the Fifth edition of the African Natural Resources and Energy Investment Summit (AFNIS 2026), to push for a new continental approach to resource management and industrial development.
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