APC uncovers plan to relaunch acronym battle against party ahead of 2015 elections

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has raised the alarm over a plan by unscrupulous and apparently-hired hands to relaunch the acronym battle against the party by seeking to register three new parties that bear the acronyms of the same parties that merged to become the APC.

In a statement issued in Lagos on Sunday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said those behind the phantom parties, who are apparently working at the behest of people who have a mortal fear of the APC, have applied to INEC to register the Allied Council of Nigeria (ACN); Advanced National Patriotic Party (ANPP) and Conservative People's Congress (CPC).

Aregbesola, Omisore and Osun state’s August votes by Lasisi Olagunju

About 18 months ago, I was at a media event in Lagos where Senator Iyiola Omisore unveiled his decision to contest the 2014 governorship election in Osun State. He spoke so passionately about his love for the state and why and how he would contest and win. I remember a number of people spoke. I remember (for whatever reasons) I was asked to also say something. I remember I got up, slowly, then told Senator Omisore that if the election was held under the prevailing circumstance, Mr Rauf Aregbesola, then of the ACN, would win. I remember I explained that Aregbesola would win, not for anything else, but for the fact that there would be no opposition political party to contest the seat with him. Omisore’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as far back as that time, was already rent, badly divided in Osun State. It was at that event that some of the editors got to know that Omisore had parted ways with his friend, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, at a time he ( the senator) was already in competition for the governorship ticket of the party with three other key stakeholders in the PDP. I thought I was helping him, giving him hints of what needed to be done, but the ever confident, optimistic Omisore dismissed my words. “Nobody will be a threat to this project,” he said as I took my seat.

As I sat back at that event, playing with my phone, my mind was scouring the ocean beds of history, of Generals who went to wars and came out victorious and in one piece, and of those defeated, badly bruised. I remembered Hannibal, imperial Rome’s tormentor for many years. Would history have listed Hannibal among military geniuses if he had repeatedly fought and failed in his missions? And, more importantly, would he have won his wars if he had fought all battles? Should a good commander fight all battles? Shouldn’t he select his battles while focusing intently on winning the war? Would Hannibal have been celebrated in history if he had not taken his troops (and elephants) through the Alps? Would he have been able to cross the Alps if he had not been conciliatory with the Gauls through whose territory he had to pass to fulfill his destiny?

Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu: All we wanted was for the man to be dead

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past…” Karl Marx

Good people are hard to come by. The uncomfortable truth is that this world despises good people. Human beings have a natural instinct to either extinguish the spatter of lights that dot the almost tangible darkness around us, or cover it up. We are quick to kill the better people in our society or to drag them down into the mud with us. We are uncomfortable with the notion that some people can be good while we swim in our filth. We resent the notion of such arrogance. We don’t understand it, so we destroy it.

Abel, Noah, Lot, Jesus, Mohammed. Just a few names of men people either tried to kill or did kill for the simple fact that they we were better than the rest. In Jesus’ case, we even went as far as to accept the likelihood of a curse. It didn’t matter. All we wanted was for the man to be dead. The world hates good guys.

The Journey To Great Political Change Has Begun —Tinubu

Being the text of an address delivered by APC National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, at the national convention of the party in Abuja yesterday


No one is more elated than me today at this convention ground. No more is history in the making; history has been made with the formation and now the first national convention of the All Progressives Congress (APC). I welcome you all.

We are gathered here because of the love for country. We know no other country than Nigeria. And because Nigeria matters, we have taken up the challenge to make it better. Conscious of the fact that our country hangs on in the face of a stupendous crisis, mindful that if we do nothing the slide into anarchy and underdevelopment will come upon us, and convinced that our collective effort and sacrifice at a time such as this can reverse for the better the lot of our people, we have put our hands to the plough. Never to look back!