APC pulls another ground shaking crowd in Ilorin, Kwara State

The city of Ilorin, Kwara State, stood still on Saturday as the APC presidential campaign train breezed into the town. Muhammadu Buhari and his running mate Yemi Osinbajo arrived Metropolitan Square in the state capital about 1.32pm to a rousing welcome from a tumultuous crowd. 

Buhari was also accompanied by other national and state leaders of APC to the rally which is in continuation of his presidential campaign. The crowd is unprecedented in the city. More photos:

Any man who says he has one wife is deceiving himself -Oba of Lagos, Rilwan Akiolu

Oba Rilwan Babatunde Os­uolale Aremu Akiolu 1, also known as the Eleko of Eko was the Assistant Inspector General of Police before he retired in 2002. He was crowned King of Lagos on May 23, 2003. In a new interview with Sunday Sun, he talked about his wives and why no man sticks with one woman

Where and when did you meet your wife?

I met her over 50 years ago in Isale Eko here. You see, there 

is no handsome, rich, young man who does not like women.  That a man likes a woman is different from a man who cannot do without women. When you see a man who can­not do without women, he can sleep with anyone. His sister, maid, his son’s wife, daughter, col­league, niece, any woman.

 What attracted you to your first wife and why did you take a second wife?

Beauty and everything.

Any man who says he has one wife is deceiv­ing himself. All those who say they have one wife have mistresses outside. I am going to be 72 now and I cherish beautiful women and nobody can stop me. I like women and I can’t do without women are two different things.

That time, I was a policeman. She came for sports. She is the daughter of the late Sir Olateru Olagbegi and was very jealous. I told her what’s wrong with you, your father married 40 wives. The man was a fantastic man. I liked him.

I have many women friends now. I can marry more wives now. There’s nothing they can do. If I ask them and they go with me, good. If not, good luck.

 Have you ever commandeered a lady?

I will start from you. Tell your husband if his Ade has Wale, he should marry another wife and leave you to me

 Do the Queens perform their duties routinely?

(Surprised) Aha (pauses) Aha. The Holy Quran says your wives are your partners. You have three main duties. Feeding, clothing and teaching them the right way and perform your duty as their hus­band .

 So you don’t tell them “I want you to­day, you, your turn is tomorrow?

You want to know? Come and live with us in the palace.

 Who’s your favourite among them?

All of them make me happy because they know I am a no-nonsense man and nobody can predict what I will do. They call me Aseyiwu Eledumare and I say I am not Eledumare. Even among my children, I have no favorite. If you have a son who makes you happy, why will you not like him? The child who does not make you happy, pray to God and try to correct him. You see, I have no friend, I have no enemy. That’s what I was doing with my son Tinubu. You see Tinubu and Fashola are special blessings to Lagos. All the people who contested are all my children.

What is Boko Haram really up to in Nigeria? [WATCH]

The massacre is going on, military officers are being arrested for running from battle, soldiers in their numbers are deserting, Nigerians in the North East are largely at the mercy of terrorists. *Sad*

I know Buhari will Win the Presidential Election by A Landslide – Dele Momodu

In this interview with PREMIUM TIMES’ Michael Abimboye, popular entertainment journalist, social critic and former presidential candidate, Dele Momodu, speaks on the coming presidential election, the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency, Olusegun Obasanjo and other sundry issues. Excerpts:

You are one of the critics of the Jonathan administration, what do you think it could have done better?

For a man with that kind of background similar to mine, he should have been president of the people. Jonathan became an elitist president and the moment you are elitist in nature, outlook in attitude, you are bound to fail. Nigeria requires a selfless leader and reduces personal comfort for overall comfort of the people. The moment you gallivant all over the world, drive special jets, go to Jerusalem with entourage of people and people are lying to you that you are the best thing that ever happened to Nigeria, what nonsense.

The mistake he made was that he did not come as a leader who was ready to serve his people. You look at their budget in a year they are budgeting billions for food in Aso rock. If the president is ready to downgrade his personal lifestyle, you will see that people will follow him.

The key element of leadership is trust. If you are coming to Lagos, you lock down everywhere; you cannot be a man of the people, you cannot see anything and that is why the Benin-Ore road they are making noise about is still useless. They have repaired some parts of it but did not do it all the way to Sagamu. Jonathan does not see all these because when he moves, they shield him...

Look at the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the most important road linking the heartbeat of Nigeria to the rest of Nigeria. The PDP has not been able to complete it in the last 16 years. There is headway in the railway, looking at Sijuade and the rest, but the government must be more serious than ambitious. If you just want to do one rail from Lagos to Kano then make it the best quality. When are we going to start doing quality projects?

Look at the international airport, the first point of contact with foreigners. I will expect the renovations that they are shouting about... I do not know how much it cost but the airport is one of the worst in the world today and that is why I took some pictures to show the world.

If I were in his shoes I would have merged all the universities so that it will reduce the overhead cost. In those days, University of Ife started from University of Ibadan. The Adeyemi College of Education was in Ondo but under University of Ife. If that is done we will have a single vice chancellor manage them well and standardize them.

I was made to know education is the bedrock of any great nation. Any nation where you do not make education as priority, you are going to have glorified illiterate. If we switch to economy, to create jobs is not difficult. It is for you to reduce cost of running government. If you reduce cost of running government you will be able to use money for the health of the nation. He should approach the National Assembly and tell them he is reducing the cost of running the government by 25 per cent or 50 per cent. If the National Assembly sees that he has reduced the cost by 25 per cent and plead with them to reduce the cost and they say no, then we will now take them to the court of the public. But when they see you are living lavishly, you cannot tell others not to do so.

The cost of running the Federal Government is outrageous. Imagine Nigeria wanting to go and borrow $1billion to fight Boko Haram. If corruption is reduced you will see that Nigeria will be top all around the world because we are the most brilliant people in the world. If it is seen that we have a good president, people will come back home to be among the best in the world. I interacted with them – our military as far back as 2001 in Sierra Leone, later in Liberia. 

As a matter of fact, Nigerian military was controlling 10 out of 15 states in Liberia. They were well equipped, motivated, well protected. Until that is done we are going to continue having the security situation. Our secret service has been politicized. I have never seen where FBI, CIA……..They should be well equipped so that they can carry out their job of spying, which is one of the important jobs in a country. That is why in France when the enemy strikes before 24 hours, they are tracked. Our men can do it but everything in this country has been politicized. We now have to choose based on ethnicity. Nigeria has brilliant people who can lead this country.

A lot has been said about governance, what actually do you think is Nigeria’s problem?

Our problems are multifaceted. They are not problems we have not seen elsewhere. They can be solved by one man. People think it can be solved by all of us. I disagree with them and that is why I ran for the presidential race. The day we get the right president with the right mindset, a lot of things will go away because everybody is looking at the man at the top. If you see that the man at the top is not corrupt, even if you are corrupt, you will be more careful. People will say they are many corrupt people in APC, but I can tell you because I have good relationship with top characters in APC that they have maximum respect for Buhari. That is why I will call Buhari the Mandela of the nation. Once there is respect, we will not want to tarnish his image.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has been criticizing President Jonathan. Don’t you feel he is one of the people that created the problem in Nigeria?

He has been a critic of the government but if he makes a mistake, it is good for you to admit. I believe what Obasanjo is doing now is a way for atoning for his sins. He must be feeling bad and guilty that this problem is on Nigerians. So whether he is doing it for selfish reasons, the reason is best known to him. We must listen to him.He (Obasanjo) is one of the best we have in Nigeria, against all odds. He was able to fight for Nigeria, hold Nigeria together, went to prison, came out, and became president though he is not perfect. By now, I am sure he will be regretting some of these things that happened under his administration. He has his followers too and he is respected, internationally.

Why did you decide to support Mr. Buhari for presidency in the coming elections?

Well, the mood of the nation favours a change in our state of affairs. The average Nigerian, except maybe those who are profiting from the government, believes that government has not performed. So I have looked at the political situation, based on my vast experience working with late Chief M.K.O Abiola, working with Chief Olu Falae, and working for myself and I can see that the only way to dislodge the PDP is if we all join forces. I’m not a member of the APC, I’m a member of the National Conscience Party and I never thought a day would come when I won’t support my own presidential candidate. But the reality on ground is that we have to face the reality.

I now know what it takes to win a presidential election. I went through it. All the idealism that I had has evaporated. I was one of those who felt that Nigeria was ready for change in 2011. They would look at the track records, merits and they could see that I was one of the best candidates that was available in the country but the truth is that it takes much more than your personal character, achievement, popularity to win a presidential election and that is why I’m humble enough to say enough of contesting and let me find one of the candidates who has the ideals that I had in 2011. Unfortunately, I can’t find any other person than Buhari. It does not mean Buhari is a saint; it does not mean Buhari does not have his own faults because he’s human being and we are all mortals. But if I have to choose between Buhari and Jonathan, I will go for Buhari.

So you are sure of Mr. Buhari winning the election?

Oh, I have no doubt that General Buhari is set to create an upset in Nigeria’s political configuration.

Despite the violence-free peace pact signed in Abuja by President Jonathan, Buhari and others, there are still cases of electoral violence. Do you see a violence-free election in February?

Oh, we can. What usually happens is that once a particular candidate is overwhelmingly popular and the mood of change permeates the entire society, it becomes difficult for people to fight because it becomes oblivious that one candidate was more popular than the other. That’s what happened in 1993. Nobody fought when Chief Abiola won. People expected that there was going to be violence, but there was no violence because it was clear that Abiola was way ahead of Tofa. How will you fight when your own people are supporting your opponent?

If Buhari wins this election, it is not going to be a close election because he is going to win by a wide margin.Jonathan’s supporters who think they can fight now, by that time, it would have dawn on them that even in their own village, Buhari has supporters and in situations like that who are you going to fight?

There have been attacks on candidates as the elections get closer. What do you make of the advertorial by Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose on Buhari?

I will describe the advert as very satanic, extremely satanic. It is probably worse than the cartoon that caused problem in France and this is where you know that Nigerians are not really violent. In other places, that would have caused violence. What he did was to provoke anger in the people against the PDP and against Jonathan. If I were Jonathan, I will distant myself from Fayose immediately because that advert was totally reckless and irresponsible. I will appeal to us to tread carefully. Who knows tomorrow? Nobody has the power to life and death. Old age doesn’t mean you will die before a young man. I think he carried it too far. I’m sure by now he is regretting it but might not admit it. If I were him, I will run another advert on the same pages and apologize. If he (Fayose) carries on with this recalcitrant approach to life, he would not like it in future. We must all guide what we say and do because we need peace in Nigeria.

There are reports that elections might not hold in some areas within the troubled north-east region. If elections do not hold eventually in those areas, do you think this will affect the outcome of the election?

I do not know what will happen. The elections are still over 20 days away. I don’t know what INEC’s decision is going to be. I’m sure the candidates will agree before a decision is reached. If the candidates agree to exclude those affected areas, so be it. The governors in those states are insisting that election can be held. Maybe what they have to consider is to do special election for the affected areas so they can concentrate more security. If it is just a one day affair, whatever it will take for those people to exercise their voting right must be done.

The Federal Government announced reduction in price of petrol, what can you make of this?

My reaction when I heard this was that it was a little too small and a little too late. I wrote in my column in ThisDay that what has been done in Nigeria is wrong and that it is different from what is done in other countries. You use to tell us that you were paying subsidies. If the price has fallen, so what subsidies are you paying? Removing N10 naira is an act of ‘tokenism’ and I’m sure it is because of election, which is sad. It is something you should have done under normal situation. You (Jonathan) went to Borno also. It is something you should have done on a normal basis. If sufficient interest has been shown, even the military would have driven into action but his body language is ‘I don’t care.’

President Jonathan Builds Roads To The Future

by Aziza Uko and Wayne Murphy

The Nwokolo family in Lagos had just lost their patriarch. For convenience sake, a decision was taken to promptly take the corpse home to the South-East and take care of its embalming there pending the fixing of the burial date. A vehicle was chartered and two kinsmen accompanied the body. By 11am, they were at Ore. They found themselves in a traffic jam and assumed that in a matter of minutes, they would get out of it. Six hours later, they had not moved an inch. 

Then they realized that they were trapped in Ore because of the terrible state of that portion of the Shagamu-Benin Expressway. Both sides of the dual carriage way were blocked by vehicles. Their vehicle could not even reverse and seek an alternative route inside Ondo State because of the long rows of vehicles behind.

Soon it was nightfall. The two men and the driver got worried.

They ended up sleeping in the vehicle with the corpse. Then it was daybreak again. Still no progress. Another nightfall came and went. Then the corpse started to deteriorate. The men knew that their custom frowned at the body of a kinsman being buried away from home, but it made no sense to continue to stay with a decaying corpse in a vehicle. They consulted with their family members on the phone and it was agreed that the most practical thing to do was to ask for space in any bush nearby and bury the corpse. And that was what they did.

This is not fiction. This happened many times in Ore between 2005 and 2009. That portion of the road was so bad that when the then Minister of Transport, Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke, visited it in 2007, she wept profusely. It was a touching moment. Yet that road remained in a deplorable state until the emergence of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan as President.

When President Goodluck Jonathan took office in May 2010, he was faced with numerous obstacles. Among those was Nigeria’s crumbling infrastructure. It was not only the roads that were in such a sorry state. The railway was dead, the aviation was mediocre. Agriculture was abandoned. Education and health were stagnant. Local production was virtually non-existent. While some programmes were already in place when President Jonathan took office, he has taken strides that his predecessors never realized. He and his administration have made vast improvements on the roads, rail, power, aviation, and port systems. President Jonathan looks towards the future, hoping to achieve even greater feats.

Prior to President Jonathan’s emergence, Nigeria’s infrastructure had long been neglected. One focus of the president was to improve the roadways. Prior to President Jonathan taking office, several projects were conceived, but none was completed. Some of the projects are the Loko-Oweto Bridge, the Onitsha-Owerri roadway, the Vom-Manchok roadway, as well as over half a dozen other roadways that are still being reconstructed. Before the president got involved most of these projects had not gotten any further than the planning stages.

On March 10, 2014, President Jonathan performed the groundbreaking ceremony on the Second Niger Bridge that would link the cities of Onitsha and Asaba. This was another project that had previously been planned, but it remained in the cooler until President Jonathan stepped in. This is a major project, with the bridge itself measuring over 1,590 metres and forming part of an 11.90 km road project. At the ceremony, President Jonathan addressed the crowd, saying, “Today, I have come, as your President, to flag off of this vital Bridge project, in order to move that solemn pledge, from sincere promise to concrete reality.”

The railway system was another major area of concern when President Jonathan initially took office. For more than 15 years, three major railways were moribund. Now, those lines are undergoing major rehabilitation. Work on several other lines has been completed, and the number of passengers that use the railways has increased from 1 million to over 5 million, on a yearly basis. Prior to the Jonathan administration, Nigeria’s cargo freight services were nonexistent, but work has also now commenced in this area.

President Goodluck Jonathan has initiated a 25-year Railway Strategic Plan. This plan will allow the railway system to be revamped and revitalized now and well into the future. And for the first time in 100 years of railway in Nigeria, the eastern part of Nigeria will be connected to the west with a rail line that runs from Calabar through Onitsha, Benin City, Ore, to Lagos. On December 15, 2014 President Jonathan wrote on his Facebook page that, “I received the news that Nigeria’s Interstate High Speed Rail Project has been listed amongst the world’s top 100 infrastructure projects with a sense of fulfillment that this administration’s desire to link our commercial and administrative capitals is receiving global affirmation.”

The power system in Nigeria is another area of the infrastructure that needed to be overhauled. President Jonathan launched the Roadmap to Power Sector Reform to design a strategy for improving service delivery, expanding capacity, and reforming a system that, in the past, has been one of the nations most stunted areas. President Jonathan states that these reforms will go a long way to determining whether Nigeria, “remains in darkness or joins the rest of the world in the race for development.”

One major step in the power sector was privatization. The Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) has been divided up into 11 Local Distribution Companies (LDC), 6 generation companies, and 1 transmission company. Two solar plants are under construction in Yobe and Kano, and the president has also managed to secure $3 billion for investments in expansion in the power sector through the year 2018.

During Jonathan’s administration, the National Aviation Masterplan was developed and implemented. Under his watch, air safety has continually been improved with the implementation of cutting-edge navigational aids, Instrument Landing Systems (ILS), and Total Radar Coverage (TRACON). President Jonathan, since his term began, has overseen 22 airports being remodeled and 16 airports being designated for perishable cargo, where none of these existed in the past.

Among other things, Jonathan has developed five international airport terminals. There has also been the installation of an Accident Investigation and Analysis Laboratory in Nigeria, only one of four labs in Africa. Nigeria has now also earned a US Category 1 Certification, which implies that Nigerian registered aircraft can fly direct into USA destinations without any inhibitions.

The ports in Nigeria have always been hampered by government restrictions. President Jonathan has cut bureaucratic red tape and financial requirements, leaving 7 agencies at the ports, as opposed to the 13 prior agencies. Prior to the Jonathan administration, the clearing time for trouble-free cargo was 39 days. It has now been dramatically reduced to only 7 days. Daily Port Operations were consistently only 8 hours long, but now they operate 24 hours a day, the first time this has happened since 1970.

Before Jonathan came into office, less than half of Nigeria had access to potable water. Now more than 70% of the population (4.3 million Nigerians) enjoy clean water. 9 dams have been completed. The dredging of the Lower River Niger is done: number of passengers on the waterways has increased from 250k per year to 1.3 million passengers per year, and cargo shipments have increased from 2 million to 5 million.

President Goodluck Jonathan has initiated, improved, or built upon many different programmes to help revive and revitalize the infrastructure of Nigeria. The introduction of the SURE-P (The Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme) enabled an economic intervention designed to reduce the amount of subsidy paid on petroleum products. The savings realized through this programme are invested into improving the lives of all Nigerians by stimulating the economy and alleviating poverty through infrastructure programmes, human resource empowerment projects, and safety net projects.

Looking at the facts, it is easy to see the number of improvements that have been made to Nigeria’s infrastructure since President Jonathan took office. As well as improving Nigerians’ quality of life, the ongoing progress has created new jobs and helped to fund essential social and economic programmes. The greatest enemy to policies and projects is lack of continuity. Every new regime wants to discontinue the policies and programmes initiated by its predecessor. Most of President Jonathan’s programmes are at foundation levels that a new government may truncate them and pull Nigeria backwards again. That is why another term for him will be in the interest of the growth and development of Nigeria.

With the upcoming election, President Jonathan has tried to stress the importance of continuing to improve Nigeria’s infrastructure. In his eyes, he wants to continue with the progress until “Nigeria’s infrastructure, be they roads, schools, airports or hospitals, are listed amongst the best in the world. And by God’s grace, this will happen in the not-too-distant future.”

***

Aziza Uko is Executive Editor of The Trent. She is also Chief Executive of Ziza Group, a company she founded in 2009.

Wayne L Murphy is an American writer who was born and raised in New York.

Having 3 wives does not affect my life in any way -OJB

For more than two years now, music producer, Babatunde Okungbowa, popularly known as OJB, has returned to the country after his successful kidney transplant.In a new interview with Nigerian Tribune, he opens up on his lifestyle and addresses rumours of what led to his then ailment.

On Alcohol being the cause of his kidney failure

It is bigger than alcohol. Take for example, I had stopped drinking eight years before the problem started. When they check you, your toxic result will come out and they will tell you what your problem is. Mine was zero in alcohol. What it had to do with was basically your diet pattern and your stress and rest pattern. It is either you get it from high blood pressure or you get it from diabetes.

Yes, you can say sometimes, alcohol could play a role because the end product of all the alcohol we were drinking was sugar. For me, mine was blood pressure-driven, because most of the time, I was working double more than I used to work. Of course, one is growing older and there is a limit to what the body can take. When you are sleeping four hours in a day, it will definitely take its toll on you. It may not happen immediately, it could happen five or six years later. That was my own case.

On his Kidney Donor

My first wife was the donor; she gave me the kidney. It got to a time when there was no where else to turn to. I even heard that many people came out to be tested to know if they could donate their kidneys. That actually touched me.

On How he  felt  when she said she would donate her kidney

Yes, I have more than one wife. I have three wives. The fact is that the three of them actually came out and they were all tested. It was not that I told them that they must come for the test; they did it voluntarily. I had made up my mind how I was going to go about the surgery. There are places where you have donor banks. I had said I was going to go for that but they shocked me when I heard they all wanted to donate their kidneys. In the last minute, they didn’t tell me what they were up to, I just noticed that they were always going to the hospital for one test or the other. I later got to know that the three of them were tested, so what happened was more of who would the donor be? The thing they were looking at was that, the third one just had an operation, so it was difficult to open her up again. The second one could have done it too but the first one felt since she is the first wife, she felt she should do it.

How he feels about her in his heart now?

That is for my heart. Not for the newspaper. You just mentioned my heart, so why do you want to know? Unless you would open my heart to see it yourself.

 On his three wives could being one of the reasons  which ultimately led to the kidney failure?

No, there was never a problem with that. Having three wives does not affect my life in any way. It was not like these women were staying together under one roof. When the stock exchange crashed in 2006 and 2007, it really affected my finances. You can imagine when you lost about forty million naira to the crash and you could only retrieve four million naira. That situation would definitely leave a devastating mark on your life. If you have what I had in stock now, that’s about three times what I lost to the stock. So, having three wives was not the problem I had. MKO Abiola had more than three wives, but he lived comfortably with them before he died.

When you were growing up, did you actually see yourself having more than one wife? What exactly was the attraction?

That’s what I can’t explain now, because when I was growing up, my plan was that I was not going to get married. I had figured it out that I was just going to have children one way and move on with my life. There are some women that are never going to get married in life. That does mean they would not have the best of their lives.

Justin Timberlake Confirms Wife Jessica Biel’s Pregnancy with Baby Bump Pic

They've kept everyone guessing for weeks but Justin Timberlake has now 

finally confirmed that he and wife, Jessica Biel are expecting their first child. 

The star announced their exciting news on Instagram page some hours ago 

with an adorable snap of him kissing his wife's growing baby bump. Big congrats to them.

If you call me a sex symbol, you are not lying -Flavour

It's no news that Flavour loves to show off his physique. In a recent interview(via Vanguard)  he says it is no lie that he is a sex symbol

“If I am not doing music, I love to work out and when I do that, I am confident enough to show my body on my social media accounts. If you call me a sex symbol, you are not lying. I feel it is a good thing for people to believe in themselves and be confident. I believe in hard work and it shows in my music and the way I walk out at the gym. I exercise a lot and take out time to keep fit and maintain my physique”

Toyin Aimakhu & Hubby Adeniyi Johnson Loved Up in New Photos

Check out these too lovely photos of actress Toyin Aimakhu and hubby Adeniyi, guys. The loved up pair attended a wedding today and Toyin has been sharing photos. They are such a cute couple. This will be their first public appearance since their reconciliation. See more after the cut.

See Photos: D'Banj Surrounded by Mean Security Dogs & Policemen Ahead of Amber Rose Event

Just before you get confused over what D'Banj's wearing, that's the swag of a king! lol. 
Everything is set for D'banj's big night tonight with diva Amber Rose.  Red 
carpet is on right now but this happened earlier on during the day.

Parties pay supporters N2,000 each to attend rallies

A percentage of the crowd that turn up at election campaign rallies held by political parties for the forthcoming general elections is rented; investigations by Sunday Punch has shown,Each of those contracted for the rallies are paid between N500 and N5,000.

It was learnt that the amount paid depends on the profile of the event, the distance of the venue and the calibre of people engaged.

The ruling Peoples Democratic Party and the major opposition party, All Progressives Congress, as well as other parties has been making claims, especially on social media, that the huge crowd that turn up at their campaigns was a proof of their popularity.

SUNDAY PUNCH, however, learnt that women and youth groups, as well as ‘elders’ are hired in Akwa Ibom, Oyo, Abia,

In Uyo, a member of the PDP, Mr. Eric Ekanem, who spoke to one of our correspondents, said

, “If you observe, you will see that those who attend PDP rallies and campaigns are often mobilised at the end of the event, where they are given between N200 and N2000 each.“The amount each person receives depends on the groups they belong.”

An Eket-based woman, Ms. Ikwo Edet, said she was paid N500 after the last political rally she attended in Uyo.

In Umuahia, Abia State, a source, who begged not to be named, revealed that unemployed youths, students of both secondary and tertiary institutions, tricycle and motorcycle riders, as well as traders form the category of individuals easily rented.

The source said the rent ranges from N500 to N3000, depending on the category of the individual and the importance of the political rally.

Confirming this, a tricycle driver, who identified himself as ‘One Nigeria’, said he did not belong to any political party but was ready to be hired by any party that could pay his charges.

Similalarly in Enugu State, SUNDAY PUNCH learnt that students are a major population hired for political rallies.

A student, who gave his name as Ebuka, told one of our correspondents that he had been part of a rented crowd in several rallies.

He said,

 “We have link men who are close to the politicians.

Whenever the need arises, they usually get in touch with us. We are mobilised through these contact persons.”

It was a similar case in Bayelsa State, where parties reach out to youth and women groups in the local governments area for mobilisation.

A regular participant in such rallies, Ms. Ebilami Victor, who hails from Ekeremor area of the state, said she usually took part in such activity because it was the only way to make money.

“It depends on where the campaign is taking place. If it is within the local government area, each participant is usually paid between N1500 and N2000. But if it is Yenagoa, the state capital, we are paid N3000.But when it is outside the state, each person is paid between N2000 and N5000,” she said.

In Oyo State, there is a network through which crowds are gathered for political purposes. The ring is run by a women and men group, it was learnt.

Youths in Ondo State are also having a swell time attending political rallies organised by parties and candidates ahead of the elections.

A party member, who gave his name as Adedeji, who attended a Social Democratic Party rally in Akure, told one of our correspondents that each ‘supporter’ engaged by one of the candidates received N2, 500 to attend the rally.

Another supporter, an unemployed, who identified himself simply as Makinde, told our correspondent that he received N1000 to attend the rally.

In Cross River State, SUNDAY PUNCH learnt that political parties have resorted to contracting the job of hiring crowd to individuals or groups within the party.

Depending on the venue of the rally, the task of mobilising at least 1000 persons spread across the 18 Local Government Areas of the state could cost between N800,000 and N1m.

In the ruling PDP, one of such mobilisers, who preferred not to be named, said his last task of hiring 300 persons to a rally at the central senatorial district cost N1m.

In the case of Edo State, many of the supporters, who are 

predominantly youths, are sourced from both within the state and from neighbouring states.....A source within the APC said,

Stampede at APC presidential rally, Lagos

 “You know that there is unemployment and hunger everywhere. They can get N1,500 or N2,000, for transportation or feeding. If you are politically active, you would understand that you don’t have to be a card-carrying member of a party to show your support,” he said.

However, the APC insisted that in its case, crowds at its event venues were genuine Nigerians who were tired of the cluelessness of the PDP-led administration.

The National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Mr. Lai Mohammed, told SUNDAY PUNCH in an interview in Abuja that it was impossible for the party to hire a crowd for any of its events.

Similarly, the PDP said it did rent crowd or pay those who attend its rallies across the country.

The National Legal Adviser of the PDP, Mr. Victor Kwon, who spoke with one of our correspondent in an interview in Abuja, described anyone making such insinuation as a political novice.

Kim Kardashian shares adorable pics with North West

 North West keeps getting more beautiful by the day. Kim calls her "snuggle bear" so cute..See another below

''Why I Rejected 2015 Rolls Royce Gift'' — Pastor Bakare

Former CPC vice presidential candidate and founder of Latter Rain Assembly, Pastor Tunde Bakare has declared that he earnestly yearns for a better Nigeria where there's good governance, equal distribution of the nation’s resources amongst others for all citizens. The former running mate of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) made this remark while ministering during the inauguration and commissioning of Grace and Glory Chapel in Ikeja, Lagos.

While giving reasons why he rejected a car gift for his 60th birthday, Pastor Bakare said he was not interested in becoming a local champion in a city of the blind, recalling that, some persons brought
him a 2015 model of Rolls Royce during his 60th birthday which, he said, he out rightly rejected, adding that he was not in need of such exotic car while majority of Nigerians are wallowing in poverty.

“I want to see good governance. I want to see discipline. I want to see equitable distribution of resources. I want to see the poor being educated. I want to see a nation that works. I don’t want to be a local champion in a city of the blind. I am not in need of a 2015 model of Rolls-Royce which was presented to me as a gift. 

I was sitting at home one day and they brought in a brand new 2015 Rolls-Royce into my house. My 60th birthday was coming. I looked at it, kai! This is awkward. When you open your car, your door goes this way, its own door goes that way. It clears the way so that there is nothing blocking your way. 

I saw a button. They said: it is an umbrella sir. It is on every door in case it is raining, you just push it and the umbrella comes out. I said: Na wa o. Then I said: Oya, leave this place. 

Where is the road that I will ride it upon? My heart is not in things like this. I asked my son to take a photograph of the brand new car as a proof,” the controversial pastor noted.

Bakare also averred that poverty has made most Nigerians to believe that anybody without a jet has not arrived, adding that majority of those who bought jets can no longer maintain such jets and are busy leasing them out.