Connect with us

Featured

The Rape of Ihedioha: Fear Grips Ganduje’s Camp

Published

on

By Eric Elezuo

With the rather unexpected verdict of the Supreme Court, which sacked the administration of Emeka Ihedioha of Imo State, feelers reaching The Boss reveals that untold fear has gripped the camp of Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State. This is because the situation that led the removal of the Peoples Democratic Party government of Ihedioha from Imo State government House holds sway in Kano, with some saying that whatever miracle that saves Ganduje will be countered with an uprising.

In his assessment while frowning at what transpired between the judiciary and Ihedioha, a former leader of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and former ally of President Muhammadu Buhari, Alhaji Buba Galadima, described the Supreme Court verdict, which declared Hope Uzodinma Imo State governor-elect as the greatest wonder in world history.

He said: “What has happened is that the Supreme Court has now tied itself because how can they do that to Emeke Ihedioha and refuse Abba Kabiru Yusuf in Kano? It was exactly what had happened in Kano.

“If an election had to be cancelled, it has to be at the polling unit level according to the Supreme Court. But in Kano, the votes were not cancelled at the polling unit; they were not cancelled at the ward level but they were cancelled at the local level. So, it goes without saying that Ganduje is gone, and anything to the contrary, Nigeria will see the fire.”

But responding, Coordinator of Governor Ganduje’s legal team, Mohammad Abdullahi Lawan, argued that Galadima’s view has absolutely no correlation with the facts and circumstances of the Ihedioha case and that of Ganduje, insisting that Galadima’s point was an exhibition of crass ignorance of the law.

In a statement made available to journalists, Lawan explained, “In the former (Ihedioha case), while there was glaring evidence of cancellation of results by officials other than the presiding officers, in Governor Ganduje’s case, there was no evidence of such cancellation by officials order than the presiding officers.

“Instead, there was proven evidence in the Governor Ganduje case, that the cancellation of some of the 207 polling units were carried out by the respective presiding officers of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) at the polling units, as was clearly depicted in the numerous Form ECG 40s tendered and admitted in evidence without any objections by the petitioners.

“Again, in the Ganduje case, INEC failed to collate the results of 62 polling units in Gama ward comprising over 48,000 registered voters in an election with a lead margin of only 26,000 votes! “What is worse is that the disruption of the collation of the results was caused by the PDP agent, one Dr. Yakasai, who testified as PW30.”

“He admitted that while the results were being collated, a commotion arose and he took away the original results of INEC and hid in a room for over one hour! In the end, only 12 of those results were tendered in court,” he stated.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdullahi Ganduje, winner of the Kano State governorship supplementary election held on March 23, 2019.

Mr Ganduje lost the first election held on March 9 by a slim margin, but his total votes in the two polls put him ahead of his main challenger, the candidate of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Abba Yusuf.

Before the supplementary election, Mr Yusuf was leading Mr Ganduje with about 26,000 votes after he polled 1,014,474 votes to Mr Ganduje’s 987,819 votes, leaving a difference of 26,655 votes.

In the supplementary election held in 28 out of the 44 local government areas in the state, Mr Ganduje won by scoring 45,876 votes to Mr Yusuf’s 10,239 thereby up turning the result in his favour, INEC said.

The State Returning Officer Bello Shehu, a professor, announced that Ganduje scored a total vote of 1,033,695 while Mr Yusuf polled 1,024,713, winning with a difference of 8, 982 votes.

However, the PDP rejected the conduct of the supplementary election and asked INEC to cancel it, saying that violence marred the conduct of the supplementary election after political thugs attacked voters and journalists. Video footages, most of which went viral captured thugs violently disrupting election process, carting away materials and sending officials and voters scampering for dear life.

This necessitated the litigation that followed thereafter.

Arguing the PDP’s appeal, Adegboyega Awomolo (SAN), said the State Returning Officer, illegally cancelled election results from 207 polling units in the state, declared the election inconclusive and went ahead to fix March 23, 2019, for a supplementary poll.
But the counsel for the Independent National Electoral Commission, Ahmed Raji (SAN), in urging the court to dismiss the appeal, said the results from the 207 polling units were not cancelled by the State Returning Officers.

Recall that late Tuesday, the apex court, in a unanimous judgment by a seven-man panel of justices led by Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Tanko Muhammad, held that Ihedioha, who contested on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was not duly elected.

Uzodinma, who was declared elected through allocation of phantom votes, has since being sworn and assumed duties.

But in his valedictory statement, Ihedioha described his ouster as a “contravention of the will of people.” He said: “I am reporting back to you, our great Imo people, on the fate of the mandate you freely gave to me as governor and Engr. Gerald Irona as deputy governor. This mandate has now been truncated and cut short by the Supreme Court, in contravention of the will of the people.

“I do not agree with the judgment of the Supreme Court. I think it is unfair, unjust and does not reflect the voting that took place during the elections. It also didn’t take care of the sensibilities of the people of Imo State. But as true democrats, Engr. Gerald Irona and I have no option but to respect the outcome of that judgment.”

The Supreme Court has set Monday, January 20, 2020 for judgment between Ganduje and Yusuf, It is jus a few hours before Ganduje goes the way of Ihedioha or heave a long sigh of relief.

 

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Featured

Military Releases Pictures, Names of Soldiers Killed in Delta Community

Published

on

By

The Defence Headquarters has released the list of 17 military personnel killed in an attack in Delta State. 

The military personnel were killed last week in Okuama, a community in Ughelli South Local Government Area of Delta State after a peace mission.

Days after the gruesome murder, the Defence Headquarters said 17 personnel including the Commanding Officer of 181 Amphibious Battalion, two majors,  one captain, and 12 personnel of the battalion.

“May The Souls of the Departed Rest In Peace,” the Nigerian Army wrote on its X handle alongside a photo collage of the personnel on Monday evening.

The Defence Headquarters gave the names of those killed as:

– Lt Col AH Ali, the Command Officer, 181 Amphibious Battalion, Nigerian Army.

– Maj SD Shafa (N/13976)

– Maj DE Obi (N/14395)

– Capt U Zakari (N/16348)

– SSgt Yahaya Saidu (#3NA/36/2974)

– Cpl Yahaya Danbaba (1ONA/65/7274)

– Col Kabiru Bashir (11NA/66/9853)

– LCol Bulus Haruna (16NA/TS/5844)

– Lal Sole Opeyemi (17NA/760719)

– LCpl Bello Anas (17NA/76/290)

– LCpl Hamman Peter (NA/T82653)

– LCpl Ibrahim Abdullahi (18NA/77/1191)

– Pte Alhaji Isah (17NA/76/6079)

– Pte Clement Francis (19NA/78/0911)

– Pte Abubakar Ali (19NA/78/2162)

– Pte Ibrahim Adamu (19NA/78/6079)

– Pte Adamu Ibrahim (21NA/80/4795).

Continue Reading

Featured

Glo 1 Cable is the King of Telecoms

Published

on

By

By Eric Elezuo

Available data and recent happenings have proved that it is not by coincidence that leading telecommunications company, Globacom, is the market leader, not only in provision of telecom services, but in being proactive to foresee future occurrences. This is exemplified in its ability to remain running even as acclaimed major networks have temporarily packed up as a result of the main one cable malfunction a few days ago in Nigeria, and some African countries.

Globacom’s Glo 1 submarine cable has literally remained the only hope for internet users covering both banking and browsing usages.

The GLO-1 (Globacom-1) submarine communications cable, which came on board in 2009, is a cable system along the west coast of Africa between Nigeria and the UK, owned by Nigerian telecoms operator Globacom, under the dynamic leadership of Africa’s pride, Dr. Mike Adenuga Jr.

The submarine cable system is 9,800 km long, and became operational in 2011 with a minimum capacity of 640 Gbit/s.

A project of Globacom, Nigeria’s 2nd largest telecoms provider, total capacity of the system is now advertised as 2.5 Tbit/s. The cable’s link to Ghana was turned up in April, 2011, meaning that Ghana subscribers are part of the millions still enjoying uninterrupted network experience, the failure of main one, notwithstanding.

It would be recalled that massive internet outages was reported in Nigeria following damage to international undersea cables supplying the country with connectivity.

But Glo was not affected, a testimonial that Nigeria should celebrate the brand as against other networks that buckled under the weight of the underwater cable failure, the humongous money they are making from Nigerians notwithstanding. Those also goes to show that they don’t believe in the country.

Reports show that telecommunications companies and a number of banks which rely on the affected cables for internet services were affected by the outage, and will continue to be partially or completely out of service for the next five weeks if reports emanating from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) is anything to go by.

According to reports, the damage affected major undersea cables near Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire and has led to internet downtime across West and South African countries.

The undersea cables affected are the West Africa Cable System (WACS), the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), MainOne, and SAT3.

However, Glo 1, owned by Nigeria’s leading digital services company, Globacom, was not affected by the damage and has continued to operate normally. Data users, internet service providers and financial institutions which run on Glo 1 have continued to operate normally.

Industry analysts believe the sturdy nature and resilience of Glo 1 International Submarine Cable is the reason the damage did not affect the cable.

It would be recalled that the Glo submarine cable system Glo 1, made a historic landing in Alfa Beach, Lagos, Nigeria, in 2009. The landing marked the beginning of cheap bandwidth which in itself translated into many possibilities in the Information and Communications sectors of the Nigerian economy.

The project jointly executed by Globacom and its partners, Alcatel Lucent gave and continues  to give Nigeria lead in telemedicine, eCommerce and egovernance among other practices that transform economies.

Then, the Executive Director, Human Resources, Mr Adewale Shangowawa, noted that with the landing of the Glo1 submarine cable, Globacom has scored another first and as well has taken a bold step to give Nigeria the lead in the magical broadband revolution in Africa.

The 9800km cable from Bude in UK, connects Nigeria to the rest of West Africa and the UK. It has landing points in Nigeria, London and Lisbon in Portugal. It is deploying 16 branching units to connect countries in West Africa.

The ED added that globally, the tradition is for a consortium of telecommunication companies to team up to set up a submarine cable network to enhance their connectivity and bandwidth capacity. Globacom became an exception to the norm.

Glo is the first single telecommunication company in the world to own its submarine cable. The high capacity Glo 1 optic fibre cable brought functional direct connectivity between West Africa, the UK and the rest of the world. The 9,800 km long cable provided huge capacity on its 2-fibre pair system. The Glo 1 cable also made available excess bandwidth to all the cities connected to the cable.

This will translate into much faster and more robust connectivity for voice, data and video. The cable will connect 14 West African countries through the branching units to the rest of the world. It will boost economic activities in the region, create job opportunities and serve companies in Europe and Africa.

Facts of the submarine cable landing included that Glo 1 provides connectivity from Lagos to Bude in United Kingdom through fibre optic cable laid undersea.

The cable which is of the 32 STM 64 type has virtual infinite capacity and therefore offers sufficient capacity for traffic for the Globacom’s mobile, fixed, and internet telecommunication services.

Last September, the $250 million Glo-1 cable system landed initially in Lagos and in Accra in Ghana. With 2.5 Tbps of capacity, the Glo-1 cable has been ready for commissioning since July 2010.

Mike Adenuga Jr., Globacom’s chairman, while describing the $250 million project, said the Glo-1 cable will provide Nigerian user’s two benefits: become part of the competitive telecom landscape and make broadband access and long-distance voice service more affordable.

As a company with unparalleled vision, and proactive initiatives, Glo in 2018, and in a bid to boost its data services and remain preferred data services provider with clarity and reach, commenced upgrading its undersea cable, Glo 1 capacity by 100G.

Bisi Koleoso, a deputy chief operating officer, Technical, then, which explaining the process said that, in addition the company as well is investing in equipment for more path redundancy for the Glo 1 in case of fiber cut. In 2024, fibre cut occurred, and Glo is still up and running.

“As the innovation leader in Nigeria’s telecom space, Globacom is committed to ensuring that Nigerians were not left behind in the march to a digitalised world.

“We have invested massively in new technologies to introduce these products which we believe will redefine business, social and personal pursuits,” the DCO had said.

The visionary company did not stop there however. Consequently, on April 8, 2011, it followed up the launch of the sub-marine optical fibre cable, Glo I Submarine Cable, which gulped a whopping $800 million, thereby making it the first telecommunication company to build such a high-capacity optic fibre from the United Kingdom to Nigeria with the rolling out of the Glo 2 submarine cable. The submarine optic fibre cables was designed to connect Lagos directly to Southern parts of Nigeria.

The submarine cables was programmed to “contain three fiber pairs. Fiber Pair 1 (Express) will connect Lagos directly to Southern part of Nigeria with terrestrial extension to existing terrestrial backbone.

“Fiber Pair, also known as Omnibus 1, has eight branching units to offshore oil stations and communities. Fiber Pair 3, otherwise called Omnibus 2, contains two switchable branching units southward Africa.”

The Glo II Submarine Cable would boost overall socio-economic development of the Niger Delta, and offer greater bandwidth for local ICT business to flourish and provide backup for the terrestrial fibre route from Port Harcourt to Lagos.

The company further explained that Glo 2 will equally be much more reliable as far as fibre cut is concerned, assuring that Globacom “has put in place workable plans to scale up the network for the future and innovation in products.

A statement on the effect, read in part: “We plan to initiate new data analytic tools to capture subscribers’ experience in real time and also take pre-emptive actions to improve the network. Also new sites would be rolled out into rural areas, banishing digital divide between cities and villages….to increase capacity by giving a congestion-free network and superior quality in voice data. We also plan to swap old equipment in other states with better quality ones, so that our subscribers can have better services.”

Glo’s invincibility in the telecommunication world is nothing short of insightful leadership, clear cut vision and the passion to put customers first in all its undertakings. This is not forgetting that it has done everything to project Nigeria’s ingenuity in the field of telecommunication,  and by extention other fields.

Glo is flourishing under the leadership of the spirit of Africa, Dr. Mike Adenuga Jr., and the Executive Vice Chairman, Mrs Bella Adenuga-Disu.

Continue Reading

Featured

Glo Unveils Korrect Predict Lottery Service, Rewards Subscribers with Cash, Airtime

Published

on

By

A new product, Glo Korrect Predict Lottery has been unveiled by telecommunications services provider, Globacom. Under the new service, any sports lover on Glo network who successfully predicts the final outcomes of football matches played across the world will be rewarded with fantastic cash prizes and free airtime.

“Sports Prediction Market has witnessed significant growth over the years, with a projected value of over $155 billion globally by 2024 and that, the growth is driven by the proliferation of smartphones, increase in online betting platforms, as well as increased sports viewership and adoption of technology”, Globacom said in a statement In Lagos.

This trend, the company explained underscored the unveiling of the new service Korrect Predict lottery, which it said, will give subscribers the opportunity to win cash gifts from predicting match results accurately.

According to Globacom “Subscribers will receive 2 football matches daily for them to predict the correct scores after which those who accurately predict the outcomes of their preferred matches will win amazing prizes from Glo”.

To subscribe to Korrect Predict, you will either dial the USSD Command *7023# or send the keyword “KPRD” to the shortcode “7023” to subscribe to the daily plan costing just N50 or send the keyword “KPW” to the shortcode “7023” to subscribe to the weekly plan of N150. Upon successful subscription, you will receive an SMS with a link to access the service”.

For the first active subscription when they select any of the daily, or weekly auto-renewal plan, Glo said subscribers will enjoy free trial, adding that “This means that a new subscriber can activate the service at no cost for the first twenty-four hours, after which he or she will then be charged for the next renewal cycle. Subscribers who do not want to be charged after the free trial and buy offer will have to cancel their service renewal before the twenty-four hours elapse by dialing the USSD command for deactivation”.

Glo Korrect Predict provides access to two daily predictions on football matches across Africa, Asian, American and European Leagues including Asian League, English Premiership, Italian Serie A,Spanish La Liga, German Bundesliga, French Ligue 1 and Portugese Primeira Liga and it can be accessed by all Glo subscribers via SMS, USSD, and Web.

To subscribe to the daily plan costing just N50 subscribers will either dial the USSD Command *7023# or send the keyword “KPRD” to the shortcode “7023” or send the keyword “KPW” to the shortcode “7023” to subscribe to the weekly plan of N150. An SMS with a link to access the service will be sent to the subscribers upon successful subscription.

Continue Reading

Trending