We will reconstruct Boko Haram-damaged North-east – Buhari

President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday inaugurated the Presidential Committee on the North East Initiative, PCNI, under the chairmanship of Theophilus Danjuma, a retired general.
At a brief event at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, Mr. Buhari said the committee, which is to coordinate the reconstruction of the Boko Haram-damaged north-east, will exist for three years.
Read Mr. Buhari’s full speech at the inauguration below:
Today marks an important milestone in our desire and determination to restore normalcy and stability to the North Eastern part of our country.
The devastation to human lives and livelihoods by the insurgency in the North East is severe, with more than an estimated 20,000 persons killed, an estimated 2.4 million persons displaced and billions of naira worth of personal and public assets destroyed.
Many humanitarian intervention efforts, national and international, have worked over time to

Ondo guber: Parties sign peace pact, coalition wants INEC to defend democracy

As part of measures to ensure violence-free polls, candidates in the governorship election yesterday signed a peace pact in Akure, the state capital.
The state Commissioner of Police, Mrs. Hilda Ibifuro-Harrison, said the police conducted the deal, which also involved party chairmen, secretaries and legal officers.
She said: “The politicians signed the peace pact to run issues-based campaigns before and during the election. They also agreed to refrain from campaigns of calumny, religious sentiments, ethnic chauvinism or tribal jingoism, both by themselves and all agents in their names.”
She announced that over 24, 000 officers and men would be deployed from the Force Headquarters for the polls, The CP condemned the violence that took place recently at Owo, despite the peace talks with party chieftains and stakeholders.She said the police was on the trail of those who carried out the violence, adding that they would be prosecuted as a deterrent to others.
The governorship candidate of the Democratic Peoples Party (DPP), Mrs. Olamide Falana, and the

Ondo guber: Jimoh Ibrahim remains PDP candidate – Oladipo

The National Secretary of the Senator Ali Modu Sheriff faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Professor Wale Oladipo, yesterday, insisted that Mr Jimoh Ibrahim remains the party’s candidate for the Ondo State governorship election.
Addressing newsmen in Abuja yesterday, Professor Oladipo said Ibrahim emerged as the party’s candidate in a duly conducted primaries.
According to him, the Independent National Electoral Commission as an umpire should be neutral and abide by the ruling of an Abuja High Court which said that only the candidate from Sheriff faction of the party should be recognised.
He said Ondo State was very important to the party and it would do everything possible to keep it.
“We are determined to keep Ondo State. The NWC decided that for us to win that election, we need to give full backing to our candidate, Jimoh Ibrahim” he said.

APC can’t observe rule of law in anti-graft fight – Segun Oni

Deputy national chairman (South) of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Engr. Segun Oni, has ruled out the possibility of giving a chance to the rule of law in the ongoing fight against corruption by President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration.
Speaking with newsmen at the party national secretariat in Abuja yesterday, the deputy national chairman revealed that “if you leave this war in the hand of people who would not be able to prosecute it, it means we give up and God forbid that we should fail.”
He said: “People who are talking about rule of law and so on, how much have we achieved by rule of law? Are they saying there is no corruption? If there is corruption, what has been achieved in stopping it? Or we should now say we cannot stop it then we should institutionalise it?
“At one stage, there must be a stop. In Ghana, Rawlings applied a measure. God forbid that in Nigeria here we should leave things until people get so frustrated. It cannot continue, things cannot continue the way it is, everybody knows corrupt people, but everybody is keeping their

APGA crisis deepens as party disowns Vice Chairman

Ifeatu Obiokoye, the National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, said the party never held its National Working Committee meeting, as claimed by Vice-Chairman, South East zone, Nwabueze Okafor.
Obiokoye, via a statement he issued on Wednesday in Abuja, said no such meeting held anywhere.
Okafor said on Monday that APGA’s NWC held a meeting under his chairmanship to ratify the purported suspension of the National Chairman of the party, Dr. Victor Oye.
Obiokoye said: “APGA wishes to assure members and well wishers of the great party that no such meeting of APGA NWC was ever held at anytime or in any place where such decision was ever taken.