APC PCC faults Dogara’s purported meeting with Northern Christians
The All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) has faulted the purported meeting of former Speaker Yakubu Dogara with some Northern Christians on the party’s 2023 presidential ticket.
According to NAN, Bayo Onanuga, director, media and publicity of the council said this in a statement on Monday in Abuja.
Onanuga had criticized Dogara of being bitter over the party’s exemption of his name from the PCC and saw it as a way for him to thwart the ambition of Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
“On account of this, Dogara has become a reprobate and has been delivering hate speeches and whipping up emotions capable of setting the country ablaze, ahead of 2023 general election.
“The Tinubu-Shettima PCC is therefore not surprised by media reports about a meeting of some so-called Northern Christian leaders, who claimed to be members of our APC that was championed by Dogara and his likes.
“The claim was totally fraudulent.
“Dogara, the peripatetic and politically unstable politician who organised the meeting left our party officially and unceremoniously weeks ago,” he said.
“And those who attended the meeting were representing themselves, their selfish agenda, not Northern Christians.
“Before the so called meeting, the former speaker had spear headed a campaign of vitriol and hate against our party, using religion as camouflage.”
This, he said, Dogara did after he lost the APC Vice-Presidential ticket to a better qualified candidate, Sen. Kashim Shettima.
Onanuga said the people who attended the unholy meeting with Dogara showed were all Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) members, masquerading as APC members.
“Among the politicians at the unholy consultative meeting were Mukhar Shagari, Boni Haruna, Abdulfattah Ahmed; Damishi Sango; Sen. Idris Ahmed Umar; and two former deputy governors of Kogi, Yomi Awoniyi and Simon Achuba.
“They are all PDP members working for the presidential ambition of Atiku Abubakar,” Onanuga said.
He added that the APC PCC was not surprised by the resolutions adopted at the meeting, saying it was only surprised that the media failed to read through their smokescreen.
Read also: APC youth leader donates N2m, food items to flood victims in Yobe
Niger PDP youths stage ‘one million-man march’ support for Atiku
The youth wing of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Niger State staged a ‘one million-man march’ rally in support of Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the party.
This rally comes after thousands of youths across the country staged similar support for Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party and Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressive Congress.
The youth wing of the PDP, Niger State staged its solidarity walk in Minna, the state capital on Monday to drum support for the former vice president of the country and the party’s governorship candidate in the state Isah Kantigi.
No fewer than 52 youth groups from the 25 local government areas of the state under the auspices of “Isah Kantigi Youths movement for 2023”, converged at the popular City Gate in Minna as early as 7:00 am where they began the solidarity walk.
According to Channels Tv which captured the walk, the youths marched through the ever-busy Tunga-Bosso Road, terminating at the Ahmadu Bahago Roundabout.
Vehicular and human traffic was brought to a standstill for hours as the state PDP Chairman Barrister Tanko Beji; the party deputy governorship candidate Hon. Samuel Gomna and the party’s youth leader Mohammed Vatsa led the youths in a peaceful walk.
Gunmen set council headquarters ablaze in Ebonyi
The Ebonyi Police Command has confirmed the attack on a section of Ezza North Local Government Headquarters by unidentified gunmen.
According to The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), hoodlums set the property on fire on Monday morning and left valuables worth millions of naira destroyed.
The command’s Spokesman, SP Chris Anyanwu, told NAN in Abakaliki on Monday that the command was aware of the incident.
“We are aware of the attack but yet to get the full details,” Anyanwu said.
“Right now, investigation is ongoing to get the details but no arrest has been made.”
Narrating the incident to newsmen in his office, the Chairman of the council, Ogodo Nomeh, said the attack occured in the early hours of Monday.
“The hoodlums engaged the security operatives in the council in a gunbattle,” Nomeh said.
“Some of the hoodlums sustained gunshot injuries.
“So far, no arrest has been made because the incident happened in the night.
“There were so much gunshots and many of the gunmen were injured.
“Right now, we are moving from one hospital to another to check for people that have gunshot injuries.
“We are not suspecting anybody now until we apprehend the suspects.
“You know the thing happened around 2am.
“We are talking with security operatives that had encounter with the hoodlums,” he further said.
Rwanda’s inflation rate hits ahighest since 1998
The annual inflation rate in Rwanda rose to 23.9 percent in September of 2022 its highest position since 1998. This figure represented a jump of more than 200 basis point from its previous month figure of 20.4 percent.
According to trading economics, the rise saw the prices of food and alcoholic beverages soar by 41.2 percent, the most since the series began in 2010. This change was primarily associated to bread and cereals; vegetables; milk, cheese and eggs.
Additional upward pressures also came from housing & utilities (11.1 percent vs 8.5 percent); transport (11.2 percent vs 9.7 percent); furnishings and household equipment (22.5 percent vs 22.8 percent); restaurants & hotels (19.0 percent vs 19.1 percent); recreation & culture (12.3 percent vs 10.5 percent). On a monthly basis, consumer prices rose by 3.1 percent, the most in five months, easing from a 1.1 percent gain in the previous month.
UK needs 62 billion pounds of cuts or tax rises to tame debt -IFS
British finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng needs to make 62 billion pounds ($69 billion) of spending cuts or tax rises to stop public debt growing ever-larger as a share of the economy, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said in a report on Tuesday.
According to Reuters, interest rates for new long-term government borrowing leapt to a 20-year high last month, after Kwarteng announced 45 billion pounds of unfunded tax cuts, on top of even greater short-term support for households’ and businesses’ energy bills.
Kwarteng has sought to regain market confidence by scrapping a plan to axe Britain’s top rate of income tax – saving 2 billion pounds – and bringing forward plans for new forecasts and a debt reduction plan to Oct. 31.
But the IFS think tank – whose views on budget policy are closely watched in Britain – said Kwarteng would face an uphill struggle to convince sceptical markets that his plans will boost growth to 2.5 percent a year promised by Prime Minister Liz Truss.
“The Chancellor should not rely on over-optimistic growth forecasts or promises of unspecified spending cuts. To do so would risk his plans lacking the credibility which recent events have shown to be so important,” IFS director Paul Johnson said.
British government borrowing looks on course to hit 194 billion pounds this financial year and to still be 103 billion pounds in 2026/27 – 71 billion more than government forecasters predicted in March, the IFS said.
The IFS budget projections are based on relatively downbeat growth forecasts from U.S. bank Citi, which estimates that the British economy will grow by an average of just 0.8 percent a year over the next five years.
However, even if the economy grew a quarter of a percent faster each year, the government would still need to tighten fiscal policy by 41 billion pounds for debt to fall as a share of gross domestic product (GDP), the IFS said.
