Category Nigeria News

As the national convention of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gets underway in Ibadan, Oyo State, some prominent figures, including governors, in the opposition party, have yet to arrive.

They include governors Ademola Adeleke (Osun), Sim Fubara (Rivers), and Agbu Kefas (Taraba), who have not been sighted at the Lekan Salami Stadium in Adamasingba, venue of the ongoing convention.

READ ALSO: Makinde, Fintiri, Bala Mohammed, Damagum Arrive PDP Convention Venue

Present at the exercise are Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State, Governor Ahmadu Fintiri of Adamawa State, Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State, Governor Dauda Lawal (Zamfara), Governor Caleb Mutfwang (Plateau) and the PDP acting National Chairman, Umar Damagum.

Also present are the Senate Minority Leader, Abba Moro; a former governor of Osun, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, his Gombe counterpart, Senator Ibrahim Dankwambo; the Board of Trustees chairman, Senator Adolphus Wabara; and a chieftain of the party, Bode George, among others.

Mohammed, Makinde, Others Receive Flags

Meanwhile, leaders of the PDP have received the flags of the party, the Nigerian national flag, and the national convention flag, among others.

Damagum received the flag of the PDP, while Fintiri, who is also the chairman of the national convention, received the national convention flag.

Mohammed, who is also the Chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum, received the Nigerian flag, with the host governor, Makinde, receiving the Oyo State flag.

Other leaders who received flags at the event were Moro, who received the Senate flag, and Fred Agbedi, who received the House of Representatives flag.

The convention began with the accreditation of the over 3,000 delegates, who have converged on Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.

The accreditation process for delegates from across the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, which is preparatory to the voting exercise, started in the afternoon.

Ibadan had been agog since Friday as party faithful from across the country berthed in the city.

Governor Makinde had on Friday hosted a dinner, which was attended by PDP governors, former governors, the Board of Trustees (BoT) Chairman, Senator Adolphus Wabara, and the party’s National Working Committee.

Convention Amid Litigation

The convention began despite the litigation that has trailed it for weeks.

The venue of the exercise is buzzling with activities and delagates from different parts of the country dressed in colouful attires.

READ ALSO: Lekan Salami Stadium Buzzes As PDP National Convention Gets Underway In Ibadan

There is a heavy present of security, comprising different law enforcement agencies, at the venue to maintain order during the convention.

Since the national convention was announced, some members of the party loyal to the Federal Capital Territory Minister, Nyesom Wike, insisted that some issues, including the conduct of congresses, be resolved.

The development led to further division in the PDP, with Damagum and Abdulrahman Muhammed heading the two factions of the party.

While the Damagum group insisted on the convention, the Abdulrahman camp cancelled the convention following the judgment of the Abuja Federal High Court.

The BoT, led by Wabara, insisted that the national convention would go ahead as planned, despite an order by Justice Peter Lifu of the Federal High Court in Abuja restraining the party from holding its 2025 convention in Oyo State.

A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Zamfara State, Umar Moriki, has been reportedly killed by gunmen suspected to be armed bandits.

Moriki was reportedly attacked and shot dead on Saturday morning along the Gusau–Tsafe highway, near Fegi village in the Tsafe Local Government Area, while traveling from Gusau to Kaduna.

READ ALSO: Five Policemen Killed In Zamfara Bandit Ambush, Gov Lawal Mourns

The state chapter of the APC, under the leadership of Tukur Danfulani, confirmed the incident, describing it as a tragic loss to the party and the state.

In a statement issued by the Publicity Secretary of the party in Zamfara State, Yusuf Idris, the late APC stalwart had just participated in the party’s stakeholders’ meeting hosted by the Minister of State for Defence, Bello Matawalle.

Moriki held several key political positions during his lifetime, including as Vice Chairman of the Zurmi Local Government Area, Director-General of a state agency, and Special Adviser on Rural Electrification.

He also contested the Zurmi/Shinkafi House of Representatives seat in the 2023 elections.

Moriki died at the age of 62 and is survived by three wives and several children.

On a cool November morning, members of a local council in central Nigeria met religious leaders at the traditional ruler’s palace to discuss religious harmony as US President Donald Trump revs up accusations of Christian persecution in Africa’s most populous country.

Nigeria, a West African country of 230 million people, is roughly evenly split between a mostly Christian south and a Muslim-majority north. It is home to myriad conflicts, including jihadist insurgency, that experts say kill both Christians and Muslims, often without distinction.

But Trump has threatened a military intervention in Nigeria to halt what he says are killings of Christians “in very large numbers” by radical Islamists.

Mangu, a small rustic town in Nigeria’s central Plateau State, located 250 kilometres from the capital Abuja, was the scene of deadly clashes that targeted both Christians and Muslims last year.

Since then, community leaders have held regular dialogues to forestall a recurrence.

For decades, Mangu mostly escaped the intercommunal violence that often erupts elsewhere in Nigeria’s central “Middle Belt” farming region.

Many of the conflicts in the region have their roots in tensions over land between Muslim herders and mostly Christian farmers, as the impact of climate change threatens agricultural livelihoods.

Mangu’s Muslims and Christians mostly belong to the Mwaghavul tribe, and have lived side by side for decades before the 2024 violence.

The town’s central mosque was located in the Christian-dominated district, and the town’s biggest church once stood in a Muslim-majority quarter.

Both yellow buildings were torched and destroyed when the farming town of around 300,000 people was ravaged as assailants raided rival districts with guns and machetes after a dispute over land, water, and cattle grazing, in January last year.

Twenty-two months later, the charred walls of Umar bin Khatab Juma’at mosque and a roofless and windowless Cocin Kwhagas Lahir church — still stand as a reminder of the day the town temporarily lost its peace.

“We thank God for the relative peace that has reigned in Mangu,” said resident Muhammad Kamilu Aliu, 37, at a hardware market. “There is no more crisis here again”.

District head Moses Dawop underlines the “peace we have been crying for is gaining ground”.

– Rebuilding Trust –

Across Mangu, Muslims and Christians are back to doing business together, with religious and community leaders intent on rebuilding trust in the community.

Mangu’s main market is abuzz with sellers and buyers mingling, while elsewhere on the town’s dusty streets, children play, rolling disused motorcycle tyres.

But the local chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Timothy Samson Dalang, and the town’s main imam, Ibrahim Hudu Manomi, say that there is still much to be done.

“We’ve been working day and night to see how we can get ourselves back to the former self that we used to be, as peaceful as we used to be,” Manomi said.

For Dalang, cooperation among the religious leaders has been instrumental in thwarting attempts by “hoodlums who are bent on sabotaging the peace process” for “selfish reasons”.

Rebuilding homes, places of worship, and schools torched during the unrest is also taking time.

Leaders want to restore trust first among the followers of the two religions to pre-conflict levels before reconstruction can take place.

READ ALSO: Reforms: S&P Raises Nigeria’s Outlook To ‘Positive’

– ‘Back To Square One’ –

Nigerians are wary of Trump’s threat to strike radical Islamists.

For many in this central state — a hotbed of inter-communal violence — religious persecution is an alien concept, and they fear that the White House narrative could roll back years of peacebuilding.

Trump’s allegations of Christian persecution will “take us back to square one,” said Ghazali Isma’ila Adam, the chief imam of the Plateau state capital Jos.

Jihadists “attack everybody, be it Muslims, Christians, pagans”, said Idris Suleiman Gimba, 54, a Muslim restaurateur in northeastern Borno State’s capital city, Maiduguri, the epicentre of the 16-year-long jihadist insurgency.

Gimba lost 10 family members in a mosque bombing in neighbouring Yobe State in 2014, during the height of the conflict.

Saidu Sufi, a political science teacher in northwestern Kano state, said terrorists and bandits often hide under religion to carry out their criminal activities.

“We have seen in parts of the northwest where bandits use religious cover by starting their campaign of violence by quoting scripture,” Sufi said. “But it is not religious.”

For Adams Mamza, 28, a Christian Maiduguri resident working for a car rental firm, Trump’s intervention is only welcome if “they can target it on these bandits, Boko Haram, the insurgents”.

As cabinet met on November 6 for the first time since Trump’s threats, President Bola Tinubu told his ministers that “we want our friends to help us as we step up our fight against terrorism, and we will eliminate it”.

Two separate fire incidents have destroyed production facilities in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, leaving properties worth millions of naira damaged.

One of the incidents occurred late Friday night at Kunzol Multi-Sector Nigeria Limited, a yam flour and garri production factory located in the Kilanko–Agbonka area of the Ilorin South Local Government.

READ ALSO: Gunmen Kidnap Ex-PDP Ward Chairman In Kwara

It was learnt that the fire, which started at about 10:10 p.m., was triggered by heat from a furnace used during production, which later ignited combustible materials in the factory.

Confirming the incident in a statement on Saturday, the Head of Media and Publicity, Kwara State Fire Service, Hassan Adekunle, said the factory’s entire production area was already ablaze before firefighters arrived.

“Preliminary investigation revealed that the fire was triggered by remnants of unquenched fire, which ignited combustible materials in close proximity, leading to rapid escalation,” Adekunle said.

He added that firefighters battled the inferno and prevented it from spreading to nearby buildings, thereby averting what could have been a wider industrial disaster.

The Director of the Kwara State Fire Service, Prince Falade John, warned factory operators to ensure proper shutdown of heat sources at the close of work.

“Negligence with fire remnants remains a leading cause of avoidable industrial fires. Business premises must adopt strict fire-safety procedures,” he added.

The second incident was an early-morning fire on Saturday that gutted Unik AJ Prints, a printing facility along Opomalu Road in the Ilorin East Local Government Area.

The fire, which occurred around 3:15 a.m. according to eyewitnesses, affected a storey building housing two large halls, including printing machines, inverter units, and other production materials.

Firefighters, according to Adekunle, responded promptly despite the challenging early-morning conditions.

“Their swift and determined efforts successfully prevented the fire from spreading to adjoining structures, averting further damage in the densely built area,” he said.

Preliminary findings showed that the blaze was likely caused by a spark from the facility’s inverter system, which ignited nearby flammable materials.

Commenting on the second incident, Falade advised businesses using solar and inverter systems to install them in isolated, fire-protected environments.

“We urge residents to adopt fire-retardant materials and ensure proper installation of alternative power systems to reduce risks,” he stated.

Troops of the 3 Division Garrison/Joint Task Force Operation ENDURING PEACE (JTF OPEP) have arrested a suspected gunrunner and recovered a cache of weapons in Plateau State, in a major security breakthrough aimed at curbing the spread of illegal arms.

In a statement signed by the Media Information Officer, Major Samson Nantip Zhakom, the suspect, identified as Ishaya Musa, was arrested on Friday at the Jebbu Bassa Bypass checkpoint in Bassa Local Government Area during an intelligence-led stop and search operation under the newly launched Operation PEACE SHIELD.

Major Zhakom said the troops conducted a thorough search on the suspect and his belongings, leading to the recovery of several locally fabricated rifles, a dane gun, an expended cartridge and other materials believed to be linked to illicit weapons distribution.

“The suspect and the recovered items are currently in custody for further investigation and necessary action,” he stated.

READ ALSO: Police Take Down Kidnapper In Kwara Gun Duel, Others Escape

He emphasized that the operation reflects the commitment of JTF OPEP to restoring peace and security across Plateau and surrounding areas.

“This successful operation demonstrates our unwavering dedication to protecting law-abiding citizens and preventing the proliferation of illegal weapons,” he said.

Major Zhakom also appealed to the public for cooperation, especially as the festive season approaches.