Following clamour for extension of the deadline due to upsurge in the number of potential registrants and the attendant logistics hitches, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, last week, said extension might be considered.
Some online reports claimed the deadline had been extended prompting celebration in some quarters.
Asked if was true the deadline has been extended to August 31, 2022, Mr Rotimi Oyekanmi, chief press secretary to the INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, said: “No. It is not true. The deadline for the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) is still 30th June. The online pre-registration service closed since 30th May.
“What the Commission has done to respond to the surge in numbers of those who want to register, is to deploy more INEC Voter Enrollment Devices (IVEDs) to areas where the pressure is highest.
“These areas are all the states in the South-East region, Kano, Lagos and the FCT.”
There were strong indications that the All Progressives Congress national officials were divided over a plan by the President, Major General Muhammadu (retd.), to pick his preferred presidential candidate for the party.
Feelers from a meeting of the APC governors’ meeting on Tuesday night indicated that the governors could not agree on a consensus and the fact that the President should pick the party’s presidential candidate.
It was also learnt that the committee, which screened the party’s presidential aspirants, would submit its report to the National Chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, on Thursday (today).
Buhari, in an interview with Channels Television in January, said he had a favourite candidate, whom he said he would keep to himself.
“I wish to solicit the reciprocity and support of the governors and other stakeholders in picking my successor, who would fly the flag of our party for election into the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 2023,” the President urged the governors.
Meanwhile, the APC National Vice Chairman (North-West), Mallam Salihu Lukman, in an open letter to Buhari, warned that picking a successor would be costly and risky for the President and the party.
He stated, “The temptation for leaders to choose their successors is democratically risky and very costly. If in 2013/2014, Your Excellency could submit yourself to the internal democratic process, it is important that your successor also follows the same process.
“Notwithstanding, however, there is the overriding requirement to appeal to you to kindly resist the temptation. I would have wished we had enough time for open debate within our party. Unfortunately, as things are, we have less than one week to settle this matter.
The council made this known in a statement made available to newsmen.
“The 2022 NECO Senior School Certificate Examination will commence on June 27, 2022 and end on Friday August 12. “Candidates are to be examined in 76 subjects during the examination,” the examination body noted.
He said, “We extended the registration deadline so that schools that have not registered will register their students. We do not plan to extend again.
“State Ministries of Education, Principals, Commandants and all stakeholders are enjoined to note that there would be no further extension after that.
As of this morning, a tight security presence was sighted at the main gate of UNILAG. Pictures also showed that some students had gathered at the main gate of UI, under the aegis of “Fund Education Coalition”, with their banner bearing captions like “we say no to commercialisation of education”, “every one of us must rise to defend education”, “we stand with ASUU revitalisation demand”.
The strike action of the lecturers which is entering its fourth month has left public universities shut since its inception following the lecture’s demands, which the Federal Government had, allegedly, not met.
One of the students at the UI convergence point for the protest, who made comments to our correspondent, Solomon Emiola, said, “we are converging now”.
Meanwhile, Students and youths has gathered in their number to protest in Ibadan against persistent school closure following the strike action of the Academic Staff Union of Universities.
The students gathered in front of the University of Ibadan with various inscriptions on their placards calling for an end to the ASUU strike.
In this interview, the Minister of Labour and Employment and Conciliator-in-Chief of the Federal Government, Senator Chris Ngige disclosed the outcome of a meeting with the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council over the ongoing strike embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, Non-Academic Staff Union of Allied and Educational Institutions, NASU and National Association of Academic Technologists, NAAT.
How did the meeting go?
I explained to them what had happened, where we are and that a lot of committees have been set up, working with education for them to get these things sorted out. And they have timelines, six weeks. So, ASUU has no business going on strike within that six weeks, they don’t have to. And by labour laws, once I am conciliating a matter, you don’t go on strike, you don’t continue with your strike. I have apprehended it, you know, so if they go on strike like that, they are forcing me to look at other areas of labour laws, because I cannot sit down as minister and a strike is going on and I am doing nothing. If I am unable to apprehend it, then I should send it to higher bodies, National Industrial Court of Nigeria.
Do you think that their demands or agitations are wrong?
What kind of question is that? Somebody says you should review his salary, how can it be a wrong demand? It is not a wrong demand by any standard anywhere in the world, it is not. But you discuss with your employers, that is how it is; and then he will give you his books and every other thing. You look into the ability to pay. It is a part of Decent Work Agenda and International Labour Organisation, ILO Principles at Work.
Can my employer afford this? That is it. So I am not against them demanding that and that is why I told the Ministry of Education to bring back the Committee to look at the proposal that the Professor Manzali Committee did because a lot of the members of the Committee have left. So bring them back and look at this report and then you distill it and get something up for the higher body of government which is the Presidential Committee on Salaries for now.
But as it stands now, what is the way forward, what is the government doing to address the issue?
We are dialoguing, the committees are working, UTAS is being tested.
Which group are you dialoguing with? Is it with ASUU, SSANU, NASU or NAAT?
That of SSANU and NASU is new. So I have asked their employers to go and look at it. Like you are talking about the Staff Schools, that issue is an issue that has long been on ground and we agreed on the ways and things to be implemented. So I don’t know.
What about a court judgment on the issue which the government has not implemented?
Are you sure government didn’t appeal the judgment? I think there is an appeal. But there is an area of the judgment that government said it will implement and the Education ministry said they will implement and I am sure they have implemented that.
If government has implemented it, don’t you think it will be unreasonable for anyone to go on strike because of that?
That is what you should ask them. It is becoming a habit that when ASUU goes on strike, NASU and SSANU feel that the university is now empty, that they should also go on strike. So that is what has been going on.
When are we expecting the strikes to come to an end?
You should ask them.
On the side of government, you are the chief conciliator, what efforts are being made to ensure that the strikes are called off?
I am the chief conciliator, yes, but they have their primary employer which is the Ministry of Education, so the Ministry of Education will answer this question, they are their workers, they are their staff.
Have you as the conciliator told their employer, the Ministry of Education the adverse effect of these prolonged strikes?
The adverse effect of the strike is not good, it is like going to war, war does no side any good. But the people who bear the brunt are the children and their parents. So I don’t like it.
Have you told their employers what they should do as the chief conciliator?
I have discussed with them, and they have shown me what they are doing and I think with what they are doing, they are going in the right direction.
The former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, stated this in Abuja at the 2022 Workers’ Political Conference organised by the Nigeria Labour Congress.
Jega said, “The sorry state of the socio-economic conditions under which the Nigerian working people, indeed the overwhelming majority of all citizens live and work, the reckless misrule and misgovernance by a tiny, rabid and reckless band of the elite, and the manner by which these myopic ‘elected’ so-called ‘leaders’ and their collaborators, have devastated the Nigerian economy, heightened insecurity, and virtually destroyed the basis for national cohesion and integration, Nigeria, as a potentially great nation, is crying for a rescue mission before it is too late.
“Such a rescue mission cannot be serious, positive and successful, without the active engagement and involvement of the Nigerian workers through their genuine representatives in working-class organizations and movements, in alliance with other progressive and patriotic Nigerians.
“While Nigeria may not have totally collapsed, it is in the process of collapsing, as reckless elite in control of the governance process are blindly running the country aground. And the 2023 general elections may be the ‘make or break’ epochal moment.
“Given this, all hands of progressive forces must be on deck to prevent our country from imminent collapse, and to turn it around on to a trajectory of good democratic governance for beneficial democratic, socio-economic development, and human security for Nigerian citizens.
The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of Nigeria, Zubairu Dada, disclosed this to State House Correspondents shortly after the Federal Executive Council meeting presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the Council Chambers of the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Dada who spoke alongside the Minister of humanitarian affairs, disaster management and social development, Sadiya Farouk, said the approval followed a joint memo presented by both ministries at the Council meeting.
On the amount approved, Dada explained that “The ministry of humanitarian affairs wrote a memo to the president seeking funding to enable us to conduct this exercise. The memo was to the tune of $8.5m which Mr. President has graciously approved. That provision entails an arrangement to evacuate no less than 5,000 Nigerians.
“It also includes some assistance for the feeding that may have been done by the missions under whatever arrangements. Even the missions themselves are also in dire situations.”
Quizzed about when the funds will be released Dada said, “That is why the evacuation flights will begin today (Wednesday).”
The president in a letter addressed to the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, and read at the plenary asked the federal parliament to consider the outright deletion of Section 84 (12).
The section has to do with the resignation of political appointees before party primaries.
The president stated that the provision amounted to the disenfranchisement of political appointees.
The Nigerian Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine has advised Nigerians in the country to be calm and vigilant in light of the invasion of the country by Russia.
“The embassy wishes to add that should any of Nigerians nationals consider the situation emotionally disturbing such national may wish to temporary relocate to anywhere considered safe by private arrangement.”
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