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Stop forcing governors to join APC, PDP tells Tinubu
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), on Tuesday, warned President Bola Tinubu to stop forcing politicians, especially state governors to join the All Progressive Congress (APC), lamenting that virtually all governors that took the step did so out of fear rather than voluntary action.
The former ruling party, now the main opposition, while accusing the APC government of marginalising opposition governors, thus forcing them to defect to avoid being targeted.
Ini Ememobong, PDP spokesman told his host on Tuesday during Channels Television’s end-of-year special programme, 2025 in Retrospect: Charting a Pathway to 2026, argued comments from the governors that they made the choice to defect to the ruling party, was to get goodies from Abuja, was not the way democracy was run .
“When you win an election with less than 40 per cent of votes, you begin from point one to do politics and if you check all the governors who have defected, especially from the PDP, you will hear one language: ‘We are connecting to the centre so that we can take benefits from the centre back home.’
“What does that indicate? It indicates the inability of the Federal Government to run an egalitarian system. It shows nepotism where you are running a system based on which party you belong to.”
The PDP has been severely depleted in recent months with the defection of governors, members of the National Assembly, and other top shots to the ruling APC.
In the National Assembly, the APC has an absolute majority with about 28 governors under its fold majorly due to defections from the PDP and other opposition parties.
Ememobong believes the defections, especially of governors, are an indication that “when you are in a different party, you are completely disconnected”.
The PDP, Nigeria’s ruling party from 1999 to 2015, is in crisis with two groups laying claims to its leadership.
It held a convention in Ibadan, Oyo State, in November amid contrary court orders: one asking the party to go ahead with the event and another telling the opposition to stop the exercise.
During the event, it elected a national leadership, but the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said it won’t recognise the new officials.
Meanwhile, the APC has denied claims of making the country a one-party state, saying governors are joining the ruling party voluntarily.
“Even if anyone in the APC wished for a one-party state, it is virtually impossible under the prevailing constitutional legal framework to enact a one-party state,” APC spokesman Felix Morka said on the show.
“A one-party state doesn’t come by wishful thinking or by people being mischievous. What you are seeing is just the play of democracy.
“We all love democracy. When democracy plays the hard game, we begin to suspect democracy that democracy is transmogrifying,” he added.
The echoes of the drums rolled out to celebrate the rescue of the 44 teachers and students, kidnapped from some schools in Oyo State, after 56 days in the bush, would surely be disrupted abruptly, with the divergent echoes of a fresh abduction, this time coming from Kogi State.
Reports indicate that the gunmen, struck on Tuesday at the Government Secondary School, Odo-Ekina, in Dekina Local Government Area of the state, abducting four students, the school principal and a National Examinations Council (NECO) ad hoc staff member.
Authorities of the Kogi State Police Command, who immediately unleashed their operatives in hot pursuit of the abductors, said the attack occurred at about 5:25 p.m. while the students were writing their NECO examination.
Saliu Oyiza Afusat, an Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) and spokesman of the command, said a combined team of police personnel and other security agencies has launched a search-and-rescue operation following the incident.
Informing that one of the students was actually rescued immediately, she said efforts were ongoing to secure the release of the remaining victims and apprehend the attackers, adding that Naziru Bello Kankarofi, the state Commissioner of Police, alongside the Brigade Commander and the State Security Adviser to the Governor, Commodore Jerry Omodara (Rtd), were already on the way to the scene for an on-the-spot assessment.
Oil prices are expected to go down now with the announcement of Donald Trump, US President that he will no longer impose a 20 percent “safe passage” fee on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
The POTUS, hinged his reversal of the decision on the intervention from some Gulf countries, who pleaded with him not to toe the line due to the massive economic impact the decision would make on the region.
Indeed, oil prices had shot up immediately Trump announced the new levy on Monday while declaring the US ‘the guardians of the Hormuz strait,’ a measure which he said was to pay for the cost of guarding the volatile area in order keep supply of oil flowing.
Reports said that Gulf allies of the US worked frantically to get Trump on the phone in time to talk him out of the idea altogether, while a flurry of appeals came from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar.
In response, the POTUS, posting on his Truth Social platform, wrote: “Based on highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership, I have decided to replace the 20% United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States.”
Trump, who said the investments would be “MASSIVE but, at the same time, extraordinarily good for them, and their future,” added that the deals would see factories, plants, and equipment pour into the US at “Historic levels.”
The Gulf nations have committed to invest trillions of dollars in the US, though it remains unclear how much of that they will actually spend over the next several years.
Meanwhile, the US continues to bomb Iran in what appears to be a resumption of active conflict between both countries, despite an ongoing roadmap to end the conflict.
Reports say operatives of the Osun State Police Command, and those of the Department of State Services (DSS) had tracking the trail of Adeniyi Adeyemi, controversial Director General of the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC), for weeks, before he was eventually pulled out of his hole on Tuesday.
However, the duo, were said to have pulled back after failing to track him through his mobile phones, which he had reportedly switched off for about two days, making it difficult to locate him, leaving the stage for the members of the Police Intelligence Response Team (PI-RT) led by Moses Lohor, a Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP).
Lohor, said to have previously served as the Commander of the Anti-Kidnapping Squad of Osun State, and reported to have been involved in high-profile security operations and controversies, after taken over fielded his men to pick up signals from their well-oiled signal networks.
Regarded by many Osun residents as one of the key security officers who contributed significantly to the peace and stability enjoyed in Ilesa and other parts of the state during his tenure, he was said to have relied on his contacts before his transfer out of the state, said to have raised concerns from the public about the security situation he would be leaving behind.
His exit from the state was said to be hinged on an incident in 2024, in which he allegedly shot one Iyanda Alowonle, then Chairman of Osun State Motor Transport System, in the stomach at the police station in the state prompting an order for his arrest by then Inspector General of Police (IGP).
His effort was said to have paid off when he successfully tracked down the controversial PFIPC, boss, who was seen on Tuesday evening, in a shot video on social media undergoing interrogation, and eventually handed him over to Ibrahim Gotan, Commissioner of Police in the state.
The PUNCH quoted one of the sources as saying: “The arrest (of Adeyemi) took place on Tuesday morning by the IRT squad, who immediately moved him to Abuja. After he was arrested, he was taken to Ibadan and from there to Abuja.”
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