Jonathan’s Campaign Manager Defects To APC

ENUGU – COORDINATOR of the 2015 Goodluck Jonathan’s presidential campaign organization in Enugu state, Chief Rex Onyeabor, has defected to the All Progressives Congress, APC.

Until his defection to the APC, Onyeabor was a member Board of Trustee, BOT, of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and at one time an acting National Secretary of the party.

During his official defection at his country home, Ugbawka, Nkanu East local government area of Enugu state, Onyeabor said he was cross carpeting to the APC because the PDP was not likely to survive it’s present leadership crisis.

He said: “Apart from being former national secretary, I was BOT member which is the highest advisory body in PDP and I attended a lot of meetings, virtually every meeting, reconciliation meeting.
“There are some people who are still there attending meeting to reconcile; you see what they are doing now, Modu Sheriff and Ahmed Makarfi, and recently Jonathan and Seriake (Dickson); it is not likely that an agreement will be reached very soon.

“So I looked at all the efforts we have made in the past trying to restructure the party, trying to bring the party out of the melancholy or depression of defeat, it has not worked; that’s why I decided to pick my bag and take a walk.”

Aside from that, Chief Onyeabor said that APC provides the best platform for changing Nigeria for now, noting that though APC might not be the best party in the world but that it was better than other parties in Nigeria today.

On what might have prompted the mass exodus of notable Igbo politicians into APC, Onyeabor said that Igbos have now seen the light and that given what he knows about PDP, which he said he was not ready to make public, he now believes APC was the best choice for the realization of Igbo aspirations in Nigeria.

Enugu state chairman of the APC, Dr. Ben Nwoye expressed excitement for the influx of political bigwigs into his party, saying that they were joining not only to help win elections but to also organize the party as some of them are political technocrats and bureaucrats.

Notable among former members of PDP who recently defected to the APC in Enugu state include the former Senate President, Ken Nnamani; former Governor of old Anambra State, Senator Jim Nwobodo, and former speaker of the state House of Assembly, Rt. Hon Eugene Odo.

The immediate past Governor of the State, Mr. Sullivan Chime recently resigned his membership of the PDP but is yet to make official declaration into APC.

By Dennis Agbo

Senate asks ameachi to resign

Senate Ask Amaechi To Resign

The Nigerian Senate has asked the Minister of Transport, Chibuike Amaechi, to resign his appointment as Minister or apologize to the Senate and Nigerians over the Lagos-Calabar rail project that has generated a lot controversies in the last 48 hours.
Members of the National Assembly and the presidency have been at loggerheads after media reports alleged that the National Assembly members had removed
the Lagos-Calabar rail project from the budget presented to it by President Buhari.

The reports alleged that the National Assembly members diverted the money meant for the said project to the Lagos- Kano project, favoring the Northern region. Speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu Dogara and Chairman House Committee on Appropriation Abdulmumin Jibrin, via their twitter handles refuted the claims while the Chairman Senate Committee on Transport, Gbenga Ashafa, in a statement he released, said although the project was not included in the original budget forwarded to the National

Assembly by Buhari, Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi approached his committee to include the said project. Read the senate's position on the matter below...

The Senate today (Monday, April 11) advised the Presidency to come clean with Nigerians on the 2016 Budget and stop engaging in surreptitious campaigns of calumny against the Senate in order to cover up its serial errors. Reacting to claims in the media credited to the Executive arm of government on the 2016 budget, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, in a statement in Abuja, said the National Assembly had bent backwards to wring a coherent document out of the excessively flawed and chaotic versions of the budget proposal submitted to the National Assembly. He said : "while the executive is mandated to prepare and lay before the National Assembly a proposed budget detailing projects to be executed, it should be made clear that the responsibility and power of appropriation lies with the National Assembly. If the presidency expects us to return the budget proposal to them without any adjustments, then some people must be living in a different era and probably have not come to terms with democracy." "We make bold to say however, that the said Lagos-Calabar rail project was not included in the budget proposal presented to the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari and we challenge anyone who has any evidence to the contrary to present such to Nigerians." Since the beginning of the 2016 budget process, it is clear that the National Assembly has suffered all manners of
falsehood, deliberate distortion of facts, and outright blackmail, deliberately aimed at poisoning the minds of the people against the institution of the National Assembly. We have endured this with equanimity in the overall interest of Nigerians. Even when the original submission was surreptitiously swapped and we ended up having two
versions of the budget, which was almost incomprehensible and heavily padded in a manner that betrays lack of coordination and gross incompetence, we refused to play to the gallery and instead helped the Executive to manage the hugely embarrassing situation it has brought upon itself; but enough is enough."

"This latest antics of this particular minister of transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, is reckless, uncalled for and dangerously divisive. Apart from setting the people of the southern part of the country against their northern compatriots, it potentially sets the people against their lawmakers from the concerned constituencies and sets the
lawmakers against themselves. This manner of reprehensible Mischief has no place in a democracy. We hereby demand from Mr. Amaechi a publicly tendered
apology if he is not able to show evidence that the Lagos-Calabar road project was included in the budget. Otherwise, he should resign forthwith.

"Finally, by the provision of Section 81 (4) (a) and (b) of the constitution, the President is allowed to sign the budget and kick-start the implementation of the other areas that constitute over 90 percent of the budget where there is agreement between both arms, even as we engage ourselves to resolve the contentious areas, if there were any. We therefore maintain that even this contrived discrepancies are not sufficient excuse not to sign the budget into law."

"We therefore urge President Buhari to sign the 2016 budget without any further delay. For every additional day that the president withholds his assent from the bill, the hardship in the land, which is already becoming intolerable for the masses of our people gets even more complicated. Certainly,
as primary representatives of the people we shall not vacate
our responsibility and watch the people continue to suffer unduly."
Signed

Sen. Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi
Chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs