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Mantu Never Rigged Elections For US -PDP …Alleges Plots To Clampdown On Oppositions, Others …As Secondus Gives Lai Mohammed 48Hour-Ultimatum Over Looters’ List
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has dismissed the advice by the All Progressives Congress (APC) to learn from former Senate President Senator Ibrahim Mantu’s claims on how he rigged elections for the party.
PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, in a statement yesterday, said Senator Mantu’s reported claims was personal to him and has nothing to do with the PDP, as the party never directed any of its members to rig election on its behalf, at any point since its formation in 1998.
“Senator Mantu spoke about his personal activities and tendencies in the elections where he participated. The PDP has never directed or had any pact with him to rig election on its behalf. Never!
“Individuals run their elections on the platform of political parties once they emerge as candidates. In the PDP, candidates are issued with the party’s Code of Conduct containing the basic rules of electioneering engagements.
“There is nowhere in this rules of engagement where candidates or party members are directed to rig elections on behalf of the party. If any member’s conduct transgressed these basic rules of engagement, that individual did not act on behalf of the PDP, and as such the party cannot be vicariously held responsible.
“It will therefore be misplaced for anybody, including the APC, to surmise that Senator Mantu, in the said confession of rigging, acted on behalf of the PDP.
“After all, in 2007, Senator Mantu lost his own senatorial election. What, then, happened to his rigging machinery, if he could not deliver himself,” the party said.
Meanwhile, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday drew attention to what it said were clandestine plots by certain agents of the Federal Government and the All Progressives Congress (APC) to clamp down on key members of the opposition parties ahead of the 2019 general elections.
It claimed that part of the “heinous plot” was also to arrest members of the civil society, opinion leaders, the media and professional groups who refused to buy into the fabrications, lies, deceptions and propaganda of the APC and the Federal Government.
National Publicity Secretary, in Abuja, said the PDP was reliably informed that the plot against opposition will be hinged on trump up charges of corruption, allegations of plotting to disrupt the processes leading to the 2019 general elections as well as the alleged politicization of security issues in the country.
The opposition party stated: “The first leg of this scheme is to commence a vicious intimidation and harassment of PDP members who have refused to succumb to pressure to join the APC in their undemocratic quest to create room for a one-party state in Nigeria.
“This will be followed by arrests, detention as well as the jailing of members of the opposition and others perceived to be opposed to the interests of the APC ahead of the elections.
“The PDP, which grew our democracy to become sustainable and successfully handed power to the opposition after the 2015 general election, has a responsibility to ensure that democracy and the application of its tenets flourish without let in our country.
“The PDP and the majority of Nigerians, rallying under our repositioned platform, will never be intimidated or cowed by the principles of democracy.
“All we are saying is that the APC and its Federal Government must provide good governance and live up to its campaign promises of eradicating corruption, vanquishing insurgency and bringing our currency to the value of one naira to one US dollar, among others.
“We want the APC and the Federal Government to know that this country belongs to all of us and that this plot against the people will be firmly resisted not only by the members of our party but also by the generality of Nigerians and the international community at large.”
However, the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Prince Uche Secondus, has given the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, 48 hours to withdraw his statement listing him among past looters or face litigation.
According to the spokesperson for the PDP chairman, Mr. Ike Abonyi, who said this in a statement, last Saturday, Secondus made the demand in a letter to the minister by his lawyer, Emeka Etiaba (SAN).
The minister had last Friday, alleged that the party chairman collected N200million from the Office of the National Security Adviser in 2015.
But in the letter with reference number EESE&C/1/31/03/18 dated March 31, 2018, and addressed to the minister, the party chairman also demanded a retraction, apology and payment of N1.5billion as damages.
The lawyer alleged that the said publication “has damaged the image of Secondus as he has been humiliated, castigated and vilified by many as a result of the falsehood published by the minister.”
The letter noted that if Mohammed failed to meet the demands within 48 hours, “we shall within 72 hours from today, proceed to a court of competent jurisdiction to ventilate our client’s right under the law and shall further seek the protection of the court against you.”
Similarly, the PDP has alleged that President Muhammadu Buhari had no moral rectitude to fight corruption in the country, describing him as a direct beneficiary of what it called “corruption freebies” deployed by his party leaders to fund his 2015 presidential campaign.
The party noted that the President, who declared that he had no resources to run a presidential campaign in 2015, ought to have known, particularly as a leader, that the billions of naira deployed in his campaigns were proceeds of alleged corrupt activities of known All Progressives Congress (APC) governors and leaders.
The party therefore challenged Buhari to make open the sources of funds available to his campaign in the 2003, 2007 and 2011 races, as well as the names of the donors.
The PDP, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan, last Saturday, said Buhari and his party leaders had “huge confessions” to make on how they allegedly raked in stolen state resources to prosecute the 2015 elections.
He said, “If the Federal Government and the APC are serious about fighting corruption and not just out to persecute PDP members, they should have begun with the probe into the source of the billions of naira used for President Buhari’s 2015 presidential campaigns, particularly in the face of allegations that the fund was looted from treasuries of various APC states.
“Can President Buhari, in all honesty, claim ignorance of reports in the open media that a South-South governor (allegedly) looted several billions from his state accounts and diverted the sums into Buhari’s 2015 campaigns?
“We challenge President Buhari to tell Nigerians what he has done regarding the leaked memo showing N9trillion ($25billion) corrupt oil contracts at the NNPC as well as the alleged stealing of N1.1trillion worth of crude oil, all in a sector under his direct purview as minister of petroleum.
“The Presidency should tell Nigerians what has been done to recover the stolen N18billion Internally Displaced Persons intervention fund and the N10billion National Health Insurance Scheme fund alleged to have been stolen from the Treasury Single Account by APC officials and Presidency cabal.”
In a statement, the party listed cases of alleged looting by officials of the federal government in the Buhari administration but which the PDP said have been swept under the carpet.
Dismissing the list released by Mohammed as hollow and laughable, the PDP challenged the minister to name any of its members that has been convicted for treasury looting.
The party said the list is an extension of Federal Government’s media trial of its members and challenged it to come up with names of its members against whom the federal government had secured convictions.
It added: “The list put forward by the Federal Government as purported looters amounts to a cheap blackmail as none of those listed have been indicted or convicted by any court of competent jurisdiction or any panel of enquiry in our country.
“The list issued by the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, only goes to show that the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Presidency have no prove of corruption against the PDP.”
The party said in its frenzy and desperation, the Federal Government even included names of individuals who are not standing trial or under investigation for any act of corruption, as well as those who are not even PDP members.
“The Buhari-led Federal Government has manifested its frenzy by going after matters that are in court and in which none of the persons have been convicted, thus betraying their wickedness and desperation to mislead the public, the court and divert attention from the heavy looting involving their members.
“We are not in doubt that the individuals he has mentioned will take their legitimate stride and pursue appropriate action in the court.
“However, attacks on individuals, who are members of our party, do not in any way detract from the fact that the PDP, as a political platform, is not a party of corruption.
“It is unfortunate that the APC and its government under whose watch horrendous sleazes are happening on a daily basis and a government that has failed to fulfill the littlest of its campaign promises, can spend a wholesome three years searching for flimsy allegations to discredit our party and its members.”
In a related development, the Chairman, PDP Governors’ Forum, Ayodele Fayose, faulted the “looters’ list” released by the Federal Government which included the name of Secondus.
Fayose, who is the Ekiti State governor, in a statement by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, wondered why the list did not include the names of those who had been earlier indicted by the Federal Government.
The statement said, “Surprisingly, while the name of the PDP National Chairman, Uche Secondus (with N200million) appeared on Lai Mohammed’s clownish “looters’ list”, that of Diezani Alison-Madueke, who they claimed to have traced N47.2billion and $487.5million to, was missing.
“Is it that the Federal Government lied against Diezani ab initio, or she has also been baptised into the All Progressives Congress comity of saint looters?”
In its reaction, the Rivers State Government said it will not publish the list of those indicted by a panel of inquiry it set up to probe the sale of assets belonging to the state because a White Paper on the matter was already in the public domain.
The Commissioner for Information and Communications, Barrister Emma Okah, said that the immediate past governor, Chibuike Amaechi, had gone to court to challenge the constitution of the judicial panel of inquiry.
Okah said, “If the White Paper has done the job and it is in the public domain, what is new again about the list?”
A former National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Chief Olisa Metuh, also alleged that there was a secret plan by the Federal Government to convict him for corruption.
Metuh, who is on trial before a Federal High Court in Abuja for alleged corruption, was named by Mohammed to be among six members of the PDP who allegedly looted the treasury in 2015.
Metuh, in a statement titled ‘My reply to the media trial’, last Saturday, said, “By this publication, the Federal Government has breached our constitution by seeking to burden me with two criminal trials on the same charge, one before Justice Okon Abang and the other before the media.
“The major crux of the prosecutions argument is that I ought to have known that the money was part of an alleged and yet-to-be proven unlawful activity of Col Sambo Dasuki (rtd), a former NSA to President Jonathan.
“In view of the weakness of the case against me, the APC-led Federal Government resorted to all kinds of dirty tactics to dehumanise and intimidate me.
“I have been reliably informed that the Federal Government has ordered a conviction at all cost to ensure that the PDP is tainted before the elections. The government‘s determination to achieve this objective is clearly highlighted by the refusal to allow me to attend to my deteriorating health notwithstanding several expert medical opinions on the matter.”
Metuh said that, by going to the media to name him a looter and without cross-checking the definition and dictionary meaning of the word, the Federal Government has not only given “a body language but has issued a direct intimidation and threat to the judiciary to get a compulsory conviction.”
With this, he said there was no way the Federal Government would allow justice to be done in his case.
President Bola Tinubu has ordered a Federal Executive Council committee to move swiftly on measures to further reduce food prices across the country.
The Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, disclosed this in Abuja, on Wednesday.
According to him, the directive focuses on ensuring safe passage of farm produce across transport routes to cut logistics costs.
“The President has given a matching order with a Federal Executive Council committee already handling it on how we are going to promote safe passage of agricultural foods and commodities across our various routes in the country,” Abdullahi said at a capacity-building workshop for Senate correspondents.
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Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, has faced worsening food insecurity since the removal of fuel subsidy, high transport costs, and insecurity on major highways disrupted the movement of goods.
Despite government interventions, food remains largely unaffordable for millions.
The minister said the plan is tied to Tinubu’s broader vision of food sovereignty—beyond availability to ensure affordability, accessibility, and nutrition on a sustainable basis.
To back this up, he revealed that government is set to roll out a Farmer Soil Health Scheme to boost productivity and a revamped cooperative reform initiative to mobilise resources and empower rural farmers.
“Mr. President has shown tremendous interest in the cooperative sector as a veritable tool for resource mobilisation, for economic activity generation, and to improve the livelihood of members,” Abdullahi added.
The event, with the theme, “Parliamentary Reporting: Issues, Challenges and Responsibilities,” also featured Senate Media Committee Chairman, Senator Yemi Adaramodu; ex-presidential aide, Senator Ita Solomon Enang; and NILDS DG, Prof. Abubakar Sulaiman.
The Federal Government has warned contractors, including foreign firms, that any breach of regulations in road projects awarded to them may lead to arrest by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission.
The Minister of Works, David Umahi, issued the warning during an inspection of the ongoing dualisation of the East-West Road (Section IIIA) from Eleme Junction to Onne Port Junction in Rivers State.
The section is being executed by Reynolds Construction Company (Nigeria) Limited.
Responding to questions from journalists, Umahi commended the quality of work on the project but expressed displeasure over the slow pace, stressing that the December completion deadline remains sacrosanct.
On the project, he said:“The quality of the work is excellent, but the pace of work is totally unacceptable. Let me make it very clear to the contractor that this project will neither be reviewed nor varied in price or claims.
“I’m sure we have issued over 10 warning letters to them. If they fail to comply with the completion deadline of December 15, we will not extend it.”
He added that the ministry had already put measures in place to enforce compliance
“The comptroller has negative certificates to issue, and I will recover the money from any of their other projects. All those letters are on record, and when the time comes, they will be invoked. Any contractor who refuses to abide by regulations will have the EFCC and ICPC to contend with,” he said.
Umahi further disclosed that the Federal Government had directed that road projects valued below N20bn would no longer be awarded to expatriate companies, in line with its “Nigeria First” policy aimed at strengthening indigenous capacity in the construction sector.
“This is part of the Nigeria First policy of the Federal Government. Henceforth, no expatriate firm will be awarded any project valued below N20bn. Such projects must go to indigenous companies, while expatriates focus on higher-value projects requiring more technical capacity,” he said.
The minister also noted that the Federal Ministry of Works had adopted a funding prioritisation framework to sustain road projects initially financed by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited under the Road Infrastructure Development and Refurbishment Investment Tax Credit Scheme.
He stressed that President Bola Tinubu had directed that none of such projects should be abandoned, adding that priority would be given to critical economic corridors.
Umahi also decried the indiscriminate parking of heavy-duty vehicles on highways, saying it was damaging the pavements of completed sections of the road.
He said letters would be sent to state governors and the Inspector-General of Police to enforce punitive measures against defaulters.
Earlier, the Federal Controller of Works in Rivers State, Mrs Enwereama Tarilade, said RCC had completed 15km of the right carriageway and commenced work on the left carriageway, with one kilometre already laid in Continuously Reinforced Concrete Pavement.
The Rivers State Government says it will ensure the smooth and successful takeoff of the newly established Federal University of Environment and Technology (FUET), in Ogoniland.
This commitment was made yesterday by the Administrator of Rivers State, Retired Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas (Rtd), during a courtesy visit by the university’s Governing Council and Management team at the Government House, in Port Harcourt.
The high-level delegation was led by the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Council, Professor Don Baridam and the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Chinedu Mmom.
In his address, Administrator Ibas warmly congratulated the pioneer council and management on their appointments, describing their task as both a recognition of individual accomplishment and a historic call to duty.
“This is not just a recognition of your personal achievements but also a call to history to shape an institution that will have a profound impact on Rivers State, the Niger Delta, and indeed our country,” he stated.
The Administrator commended President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for the establishment of the specialized university in Ogoniland, describing the initiative as “timely and strategic.”
He emphasized that the university’s presence offers a critical opportunity to drive research, innovation, and community-focused solutions to the region’s pressing environmental and developmental challenges.
He further noted that the university’s core focus aligns perfectly with the priorities of his administration.“We consider this university not merely as another institution of higher learning but as a strategic partner in our collective effort to rebuild Rivers State under the ongoing state of emergency and beyond,” he affirmed.
Responding to specific requests presented by the delegation, Administrator Ibas assured the university of immediate support in critical areas essential for the its commencement.
These include the provision of operational vehicles, key facilities, and the completion of the access road to the campus, adding that other vital needs, such as perimeter fencing, refuse disposal, and the issuance of a Certificate of Occupancy, would be addressed within the framework of the state’s broader infrastructure and support programmes.
To ensure swift action, the Administrator directed the Secretary to the State Government (SSG) to work closely with the university’s Governing Council to prioritize the sequence of requests, particularly those tied to the commencement of academic activities in September 2025.
“Let me assure you that Rivers State Government will stand as a dependable partner to the Federal University of Environment and Technology. We see this university as part of our long-term investment in knowledge, innovation, and the future of our youths,” he emphasized.
In his remarks, the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council, Professor Don Baridam, reaffirmed the university’s commitment to academic excellence, innovation, and community development.
He disclosed that the Federal Government has directed the institution to formally commence its academic session in September 2025, adding that preparations are in full swing to ensure a smooth take-off with adequate infrastructure and resources in place.
“Today’s meeting marks the beginning of a strategic partnership between the Rivers State Government and FUET, envisioned to establish the university as a premier hub for research, innovation, and sustainable development in the Niger Delta”, he said.
