'Nigerians get freedom of movement within di kontri' - Nigerians tell Edo state govnor Okpebholo
Inside di trending video, di Edo state govnor say make Obi no come di state without telling him, as im security no dey guaranteed.
"I dey send direct message to am, new sheriff dey for town, e no fit come Edo make e no tell me, becos im security no go ever dey guaranteed. Whatever happun to am wen e dey Edo state, e go take am."
Govnor Okpebholo also allege say di last time di former Anambra state govnor visit Edo state wen e donate 15 million naira to one nursing school, crisis happun afta e comot, wey lead to di death of three pipo. BBC Pidgin don reach out to di state police command to verify dis claim, but dem neva reply yet.
Di govnor sama dis warning on Friday, 18 July for Uromi, Esan Northeast Local Government Area wen e dey receive some politicians wey decamp from di opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to di ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
Oga Peter Obi neva react to di comment wey govnor Okpebholo make.
For 8 July, Peter Obi bin tweet on X about im visit to Philomena College of Nursing Sciences for Benin City, Edo State, wia e donate 15 million naira give dem to improve healthcare delivery.
'Obi na citizen wey get freedom of movement'
However, plenty Nigerians wey include di PeterObi Obidient Media Centre don react to di govnor statement.
For statement wey dem post on X, di Obidient Media Centre disagree wit wetin di Edo state govnor tok, as dem say Nigeria constitution guarantee di right of every Nigerian citizen to move freely and reside in any part of di kontri.
Dem say dis no be di first time dis dey happun, as di govnor of Benue state bin issue similar threat against dia principal wen e visit di state for goodwill and charity.
Di statement add say make Nigerians no see dis threat as small mata, as Nigeria belong to everybody, and no individual, no matter how highly placed, suppose try divide di kontri by inciting violence or wit dia words.
"We wish to alert Nigerians plus di international community say make dem no take dis threats lightly. If anytin untoward happun to im Excellency Peter Obi, make Nigerians know wia to look. Dis governors na di chief security officers of dia respective states, and dia utterances carry weight – no be just in words, but in potential consequences."
Di Interim tok-tok pesin for Africa Democratic Congress (ADC), Bolaji Abdullahi for im reaction say Peter Obi na free citizen and e no need di govnor clearance to visit Nigerians for dia own kontri.
"Edo State na Nigerian State. Di govnor statement betray deep insecurity. Wen a Governor begin panic ova courtesy visits and modest donations, na clear sign say sometin dey deeply wrong somewhere.
"Leaders wey don serve di pipo well no dey bother wen odas receive clap. Perhaps, di pipo wey dey celebrate PO simply dey remind di Edo state govnor di kind of leader e suppose be," Oga Abdullahi tok.
Labour Party govnorship candidate for di 2024 election, Olumide Apata say, "Peter Obi no need anyone permission to visit Edo State or any oda State for dat matter. Not now, not ever."
Di Edo state govnor comments dey come as reports say di Kaduna state police command don stop one rally wey supporters of Peter Obi dey plan in honour of im birthday for di state, as dem cite security concerns.
For one statement on Saturday, 19 July, di police tok-tok pesin Mansir Hassan tok say di rally dey happun di same day one primary elections dey hold for di state, and e fit lead to gbasgbos and break down of law and order.
"Intelligence information wey di command receive na say certain criminal elements dey plan to intrude and hijack di proposed rally, and use am as platform to cause disruption, incite violence, and disturb the prevailing public peace for di state."
Di police warn say e go take necessary legal action against any individual or group wey violate di directive.
Oda times state govnors don stop politicians from coming to dia state
Dis no be di first time a state govnor go kick against di visit of a politician to a state without security clearance from di govnor.
For April, di Kogi state goment bin ban rallies and public gatherings for di state, ahead of di homecoming ceremony of di suspended senator wey dey represent Kogi north-central Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan to her constituency.
Di state goment bin cite security breach as dem say di intelligence reports wey dem receive show say some pipo dey plan to "stage some violent rallies in di guise of political and religious agitations" for Kogi Central.
Di commissioner of Information Kingsley Fanwo add say di state goment don direct say anybody wey wan enta di state wit convoy of security personnel must "obtain prior clearance from state commands of di deploying services.
Benue state goment for April also say any high profile pesin wey wan visit di state must get clearance from di govnor, Hyacinth Alia.
For one statement wey di Chief Press Secretary, Tersoo Kula, bin issue at di time, e say, "For anyone wey dey consider to visit Benue State without di knowledge or approval of di govnor, e dey important to reconsider, as dia safety and security no fit dey assured,"
Di statement further direct di individuals or organisations wey dey plan to visit Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps must obtain written clearance from di Benue State Emergency Management Agency (BSEMA).
Although, di goment no mention names for di statement, but di directive bin draw immediate criticism from many wey believe say di target na di Labour Party 2023 presidential candidate, Peter Obi, wey bin dey plan humanitarian visit to IDP camps for di state.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
New polling shows Reform is winning over Britain's Christians
When we look at how people vote in elections and why they choose certain parties, analysis often focuses on age, education, location or socioeconomic status. Less discussed in Britain is religion. But close to two-thirds of its adults are still religious – expressing either a religious identity, holding religious beliefs, or taking part in religious activities. For the one-in-three adults in Britain who are Christian, this identity remains an important influence on their political behaviour. New polling, published here for the first time, shows how Reform UK is disrupting our previous understanding of how Christians vote in British elections. The relationship between Britain's Christian communities and the major political parties goes back centuries. The Conservative party has been very close to English Anglicanism since its emergence in the mid-19th century. Catholics and free-church Protestants (such as Baptists and Methodists) have tended towards the Labour and Liberal/Liberal Democrat parties. Even as Britain has become more secular, these relationships have persisted. Anglicans, for example, have tended to vote Conservative even when the party was in dire straits. In the 2024 election, 39% of Anglicans voted Tory even as the party's national vote share fell to 24%. Since the 1980s and particularly in elections since 2015, however, we have started to see changes to the Christian vote. The traditional Catholic attachment to Labour has deteriorated, as has Labour's appeal to other Christian communities such as Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians. Instead, driven by the rising salience of social values (attitudes towards immigration, social change and national identity) as a determinant of political support, the socially conservative leanings of some Christians of all stripes has led to increased support for the Conservatives. And those who traditionally did so – the Anglicans – have become even more supportive. The result has been a steady coalescing of the Christian vote behind the Conservatives. But now, new polling by YouGov (on June 23-24 2025) for the University of Exeter reveals that this realignment is being disrupted by the growing popularity of Reform UK. Instead of asking who people would vote for tomorrow, a nationally representative sample of 2,284 adults was asked how likely they were to ever vote for each major party, on a scale from zero (very unlikely) to ten (very likely). While not the same as a direct question about how someone would vote in an election, the likelihood question provides a much richer measure of the strength of their support for all of the major parties. Among Anglicans, Labour remains deeply unpopular: over half gave the party a 0. In contrast, the Conservatives still enjoy strong support among Anglicans, with 35% giving them a vote likelihood of seven or higher – the kind of support associated with voting for the party in an election. Reform, however, has caught up. Despite only 15% of Anglicans voting Reform in 2024, 38% now rate their likelihood of voting for the party as high. That's the same as the proportion who are strongly opposed to Reform – showing that while the party polarises Anglicans more than the Conservatives, Reform could win as much Anglican support as the Tories in an election. Catholics show a similar trend. Labour's traditional support is eroding: 40% of Catholics said they had zero likelihood of voting Labour, while 29% are strong supporters. As with Conservatives for the Anglican vote, Reform is almost level-pegging with Labour for the Catholic vote at 28%. It has even supplanted the Conservatives, of whom 22% of Catholics are strong supporters. It is not yet clear why this is happening. The distinction of Christian (and non-Christian) voting patterns is not an artefact of age – there are many studies that prove this is the case. It may be that Reform's stances on issues such as immigration resonate with Christians' concerns to the extent that they are willing to set aside their historic party loyalties. Or it may be that Christians are as prone as other British voters to turn to Reform out of frustration with the performances of Labour and the Conservatives in office. Swing voters and party competition This data also shows the extent to which voters' support for parties overlaps or is exclusive. In other words, which voters have a high vote likelihood for only one party (and so are likely committed to backing that party in an election), which do not have such high likelihoods for any party (and so will probably not vote at all), and which have similarly high likelihoods for more than one party (effectively swing voters, persuadable one way or the other). Among the religiously unaffiliated, 29% aren't strong supporters of any party. For Catholics, it's 26%. Anglicans are more politically anchored, however, with only 20% in this category. While traditionally, we would have expected this to reflect Anglicans' greater tendency to support the Tories, only 17% of Anglicans are strong supporters of only that party, compared with 21% who are firmly behind Reform. These aren't swing voters; they've switched sides. A further 12% of Anglicans have high vote likelihoods for both the Tories and Reform. These are swing voters that the two parties could realistically expect to win over. Catholics are even more fragmented. Only 13% are strong supporters of Labour alone, along with 12% and 17% who are strong supporters of the Conservatives and Reform alone, respectively. Few Catholics are torn between Labour and the other parties, but 5% are swing voters between the Conservatives and Reform: the Tories' gradual winning over of Catholics over the last 50 years is also being challenged by the appeal of Reform. The party has provided a socially conservative alternative to the Conservatives, with the result that the Christian vote has become more fragmented. The Tories are no longer the main beneficiaries of Labour's loss of its traditional Catholic vote. In addition, Reform is as popular as the Conservatives among Anglicans, and as popular as Labour among Catholics. This suggests it is appealing across the traditional denominational divide more successfully than either of the major parties. If there is to be a single party that attracts the bulk of Britain's Christian support, at this point it is far more likely to be Reform than anyone else.
The Guardian
10 hours ago
- The Guardian
Blue gold: how a Ghana mine's troubles hit workers and UK politicians – and could cost British taxpayers
In late 2020, amid the economic maelstrom unleashed by Covid-19, there were few better places to be than sitting on top of a goldmine. In Ghana, the west African country once called the Gold Coast by British colonisers, the Bogoso-Prestea mine was producing 4,000 ounces of the precious metal a month, valued at $6m (£4.5m). As gold prices reached record highs, London-based Blue International Holdings – a seasoned investor in African energy projects, pounced to buy the mine for $95m. Blue International promised 'attractive financial returns while having a positive impact on the communities and countries in which it operates, and the planet as a whole', according to its website. It enjoyed the backing of a trio of British political heavyweights, including two members of the House of Lords and a government minister. Yet, a few short years later, its future appears to have tarnished. And, as the Guardian reveals now, the venture appears to have resulted in collateral damage to everyone from Ghanaian mineworkers to a member of the British royal family, a billionaire backer of the GB News TV channel and, possibly, UK taxpayers. 'Blue Gold is a scam' read a placard, as protesters, backed by a brass band, voiced their discontent in February 2024. It was the latest in a string of demonstrations as miners and suppliers in the resource-rich Ashanti gold belt demanded to know why they were seeing no benefit from the precious metal buried beneath their feet. Four years earlier, when Blue International arrived, the future had seemed promising. The company boasted a track record of African investment stretching back to 2011, steered by its co-founders Andrew Cavaghan and Mark Green, professional investors with financial pedigree. As well as its new goldmine in southern Ghana, the company also owned a promising hydroelectric power project in Sierra Leone, a partnership with the government in Freetown. It came with a phalanx of prestige backers, drawn from the British political and business elite. Lord Dannatt, the former head of the British army, and Lord Triesman, a Foreign Office minister with responsibility for UK diplomatic relations in Africa, served on its advisory board. So, too, did Philip Green, who was rebuilding his reputation after the implosion of the government outsourcer Carillion, which collapsed during his time as chair in 2018. John Glen, a Treasury minister between 2018 and 2023, held shares in the company. The UK taxpayer was also significantly exposed. In early 2024, it emerged that the Treasury had lent Blue International £3.3m of taxpayers' money via the 'Future Fund' the previous year. Glen, the MP for Salisbury in Wiltshire, said he was not aware of the loan application when he served at the Treasury and there is no suggestion that he did. The Future Fund was designed, in the words of then chancellor Rishi Sunak, to support 'start-ups and innovative firms' survive the pandemic by extending them loans that converted into equity. In this case, the money supported a company engaged in extracting valuable minerals from African soil. In mining, all can appear calm on the surface, even as things fall apart below ground. By the time British taxpayers' money was pumped into Blue International, its Ghanaian venture was on the brink of a financial collapse whose tremors reached from rural west Africa to the City of London. Within two years of Blue International's takeover, operations at Bogoso-Prestea had been shut down several times, according to corporate filings and contemporary reports. Mineworkers blamed lack of investment from Blue, which owned and operated the mine via a local subsidiary, Future Global Resources (FGR). Lack of output choked off cashflow and increased costs, as equipment failed or required maintenance, according to one corporate filing. FGR failed to pay local suppliers, including the Ghanaian state electricity company, while mineworkers were left out of pocket, according to filings, fuelling local protests. 'It had devastating consequences,' said Abdul-Moomin Gbana, the general secretary of the Ghana Mineworkers' Union (GMWU). He said workers' salaries went unpaid for months, hitting the community hard. 'General conditions declined because they had no income. The communities virtually became ghost towns,' he said. 'It became obvious that if nothing was done, there was no way there could be a future for the mine.' Blue Gold declined to answer questions about the claims of unpaid wages, and directed questions to FGR. FGR did not respond to requests for comment. Eventually, in 2024, the Ghanaian government issued an ultimatum. Blue International must restore the mine to working production or hand back its lease, the right to own and operate the site. The company tried to issue bonds – a form of IOU – in Ghana to raise cash that could be invested in bringing the mine back to production but the fundraising effort stalled. The directors behind Blue International, Cavaghan and Green, restructured the debt-laden mine's ownership, moving it into a new entity called Blue Gold, also owned and incorporated by them, as part of a plan to raise new investment in the US. Despite this, in late 2024, the government of Ghana made good on its threat to seize back the Bogoso-Prestea lease. A legal challenge from the company failed earlier this year in Ghana's high court and the mine was handed over to a new operator. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion Blue International's travails were not felt only by Ghanaian miners and the surrounding community. The British taxpayer's investment in the business now appeared to be under threat too. But it was blue-blooded lenders that suffered the more profound consequences. In 2021, at the start of its Ghanaian venture, Blue International had borrowed about $5m from Devonport Capital, a bespoke lender specialising in 'high-risk' jurisdictions, offering short-term loans at relatively high interest rates. Devonport, headquartered in Plymouth, was founded by Paul Bailey, a corporate lawyer who had carved out a niche advising investors in postwar Iraq. His partner was Thomas Kingston, who had also worked in Iraq conducting hostage negotiations for the UK Foreign Office in Baghdad, where he had witnessed first-hand the horrors of sectarian violence. In the UK, Kingston was better known for his marriage, in 2019, to Lady Gabriella Windsor, a second cousin of King Charles III. With this experienced and well-connected duo at the helm, Devonport thrived, recording pre-tax profit of £6m in 2023. But as Blue International's Ghanaian woes mounted, it began defaulting on the interest payments it owed to Devonport. Another of Devonport's important borrowers also defaulted at the same time, leaving the lender increasingly unable to repay its own creditors. Then, in February 2024, personal tragedy struck. Thomas Kingston died from a gunshot wound at his parents' home in the Cotswolds on 25 February. A coroner ruled that he had taken his own life. Torn apart by a combination of personal tragedy and the ongoing inability to recover its debts, Devonport fell into administration a year later. A report published in March by the administrator, RG Insolvency, lists creditors who had lent money to Devonport. Among them is Christopher Chandler, a New Zealand businessman and founder of Dubai-based investment company Legatum, which funds UK media channel GB News. Chandler declined to comment. Creditors also include HM Revenue and Customs, which is owed more than £788,000. RG Insolvency estimates that, of the £49m owed by Devonport, as little as £11.2m could be recovered. Much will depend on whether administrators can recoup about £13.5m owed by Blue International. Earlier this year, the team behind Blue International completed a $114.5m combination with a US 'blank cheque' investment firm called Perception Capital, and floating the combined entity on the US Nasdaq stock exchange under the Blue Gold name. What comes next is murky at best. Blue Gold's new website outlines ambitious plans to reopen the Bogoso-Prestea mine. But Ghana appears to be sticking by its decision to strip Blue of the lease. The dispute is now the subject of international arbitration, according to a stock market filing by Blue Gold, leaving the mine's future up in the air. In an annual report filed in the US, Blue Gold admits that the leases may never be returned, which would reduce the value of the company's assets from $368m to less than $45m. A section on the company website offers little further clarity, stating: 'Subject to resolving legal dispute with the government of Ghana, first gold pour is expected.' The Guardian approached the Foreign Office to ask if the UK government had intervened on Blue Gold's behalf with ministers in Accra. The department declined to comment. Dannatt and Triesman also declined to comment. Glen said he had not discussed the company's Ghanaian dispute with any UK government department, official or diplomat. On the ground in Ghana,local sources say little has changed, with operations still shut down under a new owner and mineworkers still left unpaid. The uncertainty means that, for everyone from local mineworkers to members of the British establishment, the dream of blue gold remains a mirage, tantalisingly out of reach. The Guardian approached Blue Gold for comment. The company referred the Guardian to its website and shareholder filings but did not address questions directly. Paul Bailey did not return requests for comment. RG Insolvency declined to comment.
Telegraph
10 hours ago
- Telegraph
The real Kemi: what everyone gets wrong about the Tory leader
My favourite story about Kemi Badenoch happened in a classroom thousands of miles away in the mid-90s. She was 15 and writing an exam when a classmate started cheating with a textbook. Everyone could see it – the boy wasn't exactly subtle about flipping through pages under his desk. But this was Nigeria, where you learned early which battles were worth fighting and which weren't. Making a fuss about cheating meant making enemies. Kemi stood up anyway. 'I studied for this exam,' she said, loud enough for everyone to hear, 'and this guy is here cheating.' The boy was expelled. Word spread around the entire school and Kemi spent the rest of the term as a curiosity in her school. Who was this girl? Many thought her reckless; someone who invited hostility, possibly even violence. I heard from others that what was most odd was that Kemi didn't seem to care. She was so convinced that she had told the truth and done the right thing; her strict Methodist upbringing provided her with a thick skin. In a country where getting by often meant looking the other way, she had refused to look away. It's tempting to see this as the origin story of a future Conservative leader, but the truth is more complicated. Had she lived to adulthood in Nigeria, that fierce sense of right and wrong might have been worn down by the daily grind of compromise that living there demands. Standing out in the crowd in an African country is dangerous, and especially bad for women. There are rules to be followed. When to speak, what to like, what to wear, who to marry. The choice is to follow the rules or to be an outcast. The year she stood up in her classroom against injustice – 1995 – Nigeria was kicked out of the Commonwealth for human rights abuses; the nation she and I grew up in was marked by economic upheaval, military dictatorship and deep-seated corruption. Where Nigeria might have demanded compromise, Britain simply let her be. In Lagos, standing up to a cheater had made her an outlier; in London, it would have made her a hero. The very qualities that marked her as difficult in one place made her formidable in another. Those of us who have known her over the years can trace a clear line from the girl who refused to look away in that sweltering classroom to the woman who still refuses to look away today as leader of the Conservative Party. That freedom is why she loves Britain with a passion that baffles the Left, who cannot conceive of her as anything but a puppet of Right-wing interests. She confounds their tidy expectations of what a black woman should think, say, or aspire to. They believe she doesn't know her place. According to their world view, Britain is a bastion of white supremacy and racial inequality, and a black woman must unequivocally denounce the country. Kemi is an oddball to them. Now, as Conservative leader, she faces the mirror image of this contempt from some on the fringes of the Right: the white supremacists, for instance, who denounce her online as a 'diversity hire', a plant by the WEF, the Jews, or whatever conspiracy is trending that week. They, too, believe she doesn't know her place. Both extremes share the same fundamental error – they cannot fathom that her place is exactly where she chooses to stand. Kemi and I are good friends. But we could not be more different. I prefer to mind my own business and I'd sooner jump off a bridge than run the gauntlet of British politics. Yet in all the years I've known her, I've come to recognise that we share something fundamental: we both found in Britain a place that would accommodate who we are without judgement, yet still possess a set of customs and values that define it as a particular place. This isn't about blind love for a country. It is about understanding the delicate balance between tolerating others and maintaining a coherent identity: there are different shades of British identity, but they are undeniably British. We may express it differently, but we both grasp the same truth: the space to be yourself only exists when certain boundaries hold. She is one of a handful of politicians I see able to make this subtle case with a thoughtfulness lacking in our politics today. Her British identity is not something which she takes for granted – she could easily have followed another route – and this gives her a refreshing insight into this country. Knowing all this about her, I was surprised when a journalist from The New Statesman called me a few weeks ago. He said he wanted to talk about Nigeria in the 1990s. In truth he was fishing for unflattering stories about Kemi. The published article bore no resemblance to the conversation we had: this is a small window into the misrepresentation she faces daily. The online caricatures, the lazy stereotypes masquerading as analysis, the attacks from Left and Right for refusing to be what others expect – she's navigated being misunderstood since that Lagos classroom. Her job ahead may look impossible to some; fixing the Conservative Party's reputation after a tumultuous 14 years in government is no easy task. But those who doubt Kemi, or sneer at her, should consider that her Methodist upbringing prepared her for politics – just as it prepared her 30 years ago to stand up to that school cheat. Standing alone is sometimes the price of standing for something.
