MMA BAKASSI, SENATOR FLORENCE ITA-GIWA SLAMS RULING PARTY THE APC. CALLS THEM A HOUSE OF CONFUSION AS SHE RETURNS BACK TO THE PDP

Dame of Politics and the most outspoken person from Bakassi, Mma BAKASSI, Senator Florence Ita-Giwa who moved to the ruling party the APC just about a year ago, after a protracted simmering issues with her home state Governor then, has blasted the APC where she moved to, has she dumps them, to move back to where she came from in the first instance, which is the PDP.

Just imagine that the well connected, highly influential politician who is also a noted style icon, with many awards in her kitty slamming the APC, as a "house of confusion"! That's a super shocking assessment coming from her and a damning indictment of the party especially ahead of the election year, 2019.

The most visible and the most famous female politician from Cross Rivers State, who apart from being a former Senator, was also at a time the Senate Deputy Minority Leader and a special adviser to the then president tabled a few of the reasons for her change of mind thus--

She stated that in her over three decades in politics, she has not seen the kind of confusion she met in the APC inspite of the kind of forthright President the party produced in 2015 in the person of Mohammadu Buhari and an intelligent Vice President, but recent activities in the APC is nothing but complete confusion.

-"I cannot understand why out of sheer negligence, a party will not be able to present candidates for elections in several key states nationwide.

-“ I cannot understand how any party will have in its ranks popular and trusted leaders who can muster tremendous goodwill for the party and yet treats them with disdain”.

She further went ahead to say  "the party is factionalised, beginning from the ward to the national level, which shows how incapable it is to organise itself and get ready to win an election and so for that reason, she would prefer to swim or sink with her original home, the PDP.

“The experience of the supposed recent direct primaries was also a taste of sour experience where factional interests simply allocated figures and manipulated same as votes after shutting out other aspirants in the race”

The well loved Mma Bakassi further explained that the factionalisation even affected her own ward and local government area, where the party is grappling with the problem of proper resettlement of the people and there are divisions in the party which shows it can never make headway or win against the PDP.

She then called on all her supporters to join her as she returns to the PDP and to ensure victory for the party at all levels.

Mma Bakassi has a rich political history in Nigeria. The 72 year old started her political sojourn as far back as thr days of the NRC, the party from where she became a House of representatives member in 1992. She later became a Senator on the platform of the APP in 1999 till 2003. It was after she left the Senate in 2003 that she joined the then ruling party the PDP and she became the special adviser to the then President Olusegun Obasanjo, GCFR, on National Assembly Matters. It was from the PDP last year that she jumped ships and joined the ruling APC from where she has now moved back again to the PDP. 

WE (NIGERIANS) ARE LIVING IN FOOL'S PARADISE. FORMER GOVERNOR DONALD DUKE

Donald Duke

'...And there is no master-plan to make each one of the states an economic entity,” Duke said. “So, we have a country, where a blessing (exponential population growth) is turning into a curse, because in the next three years, our population will be 200 million, yet all the productive indices are going down. Lagos may be crowded out; every year, 750,000 new people come to Lagos to reside; the economy cannot support that. So if you don’t get the rest of the country working, Lagos itself will collapse.

“I had a meeting once with U.S. State Department, and they said to me, we have no conversion interest in Nigeria any longer; yes we have a few companies – ExxonMobil, Chevron – working here, but we don’t buy oil from Nigeria, and the export-import bill is not significant. But we have a lot of interest in Nigeria, and that is security. Nigeria, to them, is like a dam, and if it should burst, it would flood all of West and Central Africa. So their only interest in Nigeria is insecurity because the country can also be a base for terrorism – terrorists thrive in poor environments. They are not dealing with us on the basis of commerce, they are dealing with us on the threat that we pose to them.”

Duke also believes the Buhari government has no business patting itself on the back on the basis of improving the economy.

“Just because it is easier for goods to pass through the port – that’s no big deal,” he said. “The point is what does each one of us add to the general well- being of the country. Most folks in Nigeria are parasitic. You walk on the streets and people in the prime of their lives are hawking plantain chips if they are lucky to find something to hawk. We, the few privileged, sit in our cars, our windows wound up, and pretend to look at our phones because we don’t want to see the reality out there.

“This country, for instance, has to grow at about 15 per cent annually, not in Lagos, but nationally, for the next ten years, to absorb the numbers that are out of the economy. We are self-deceptive. We say that unemployment is 15 per cent.

In other words, out of every 100 only 15 have no jobs. I think it is the other way round; only 15 have jobs and the rest 85 are living off the 15; the question is how long can that go on?

“Then we sit down and say that inflation is 16 per cent. How do you arrive at that? I know I’m broke. So if inflation is too much money in circulation, where is this money? The truth is too few people have too much money. If you re-circulate resources properly, and I am not being socialist here (all you need to do is to create jobs for people), then you’ll find that it will reflect on the economy.

“So what we are doing is to run a goodwill economy; 85 percent of the economy is depending on the goodwill of the 15 percent.”

To move the country forward, Mr. Duke advocated for a policy he described as SHIT (Skills, Health, Infrastructure and Technology).

“I don’t use education any longer because education is beyond reading and writing. Education without the set skills that make you productive is hollow,” he said. “We are ridiculously spiritual because we live purely by the grace of God. Yes, we all do, but heaven helps those who help themselves. If you are afflicted here by a disease today, your chances of survival are 50:50. The drugs for common diseases are not even manufactured here. So we have a loss of productivity that we have not addressed at all.”

Culled from Thisday Newspaper

DONALD DUKE & DEINDE FERNANDEZ SET TO UNITE IN HOLY MATRIMONY

Xerona & Derin

Couple

Xerona

Actually it is the Dukes and the Phillips, who are about to officially tie the knots pretty soon.

Donald and Onari Duke were the gorgeous and stylish couple who were the former executive Governor of Cross Rivers State and his former first lady. Donald it was that brought about some of those extraordinary infrastructural development in his state.

Chief Mrs. Teju Phillips on the other hand, is the first daughter of the late former Apena and one of the most flamboyant and most respected Africans in the world, in the person of Chief Deinde Fernandez. Mrs. Teju Phillips was one of the top Commissioners in Lagos, during the administration of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

These 2 families are set to unite in a big society wedding that's upcoming very very soon. The duo of the stupendously gorgeous and cerebral Xerona Duke and the dashing Derin Phillips aka the incredible DJ Caise have been engaged since August of 2017.

But their actual introduction ceremony was just at the weekend. The wedding would be a great display and the unity of the best of the Yoruba culture mixed with that of the very rich Efik culture and the panache and glamour of the Kalabaris!

The details of the upcoming wedding though not out yet, would soon be related to friends and family members and we are sure it would be a super stylish one, going by the antecedence of those involved.

From the pre-wedding pictures taken at the introduction, it is obvious that the duo are madly and sumptuously in love with each other. Infact the love seems very overpowering.

More pictures after the break.

GOVERNOR OF CROSS RIVERS STATE PROF. BEN AYADE DAZZLES ACTING PRESIDENT WITH KEY PROJECTS

The acting PRESIDENT of Nigeria in the person of his excellency, Professor Yemi Osinbajo was hosted by the Governor, Government and people of Cross Rivers State today, Friday, June 2, 2017 to a state visit. And to make sure that the visit was a monumental one, that really counted. The government made sure the VP and acting PRESIDENT was moving from the commissioning of one massive state projects to the other.

This is especially coming after the government had been much maligned by a slew of people, for embarking on projects that some had thought were either ''white elephant projects'' or were just air castles that were been built in thin air.

More after the break.