Daily Watch – Buhari seeks Senate’s nod for more debt, Court boots Taraba APC guber candidate

A Federal High Court in Jalingo, Taraba State, on Tuesday, sacked the All Progressives Congress governorship candidate Emmanuel Bwacha. Mr Bwacha’s sacking comes after a petition by one of the aspirants, David Kente, and others to court alleging that the APC did not conduct a valid governorship primary election in the state. Agreeing with the petitioners, the judge, Simon Amobeda, ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to conduct a fresh election within 14 days. He also ordered the electoral commission to henceforth stop the recognition of Mr Bwacha as the candidate of the party. The court warned Mr Bwacha, who is the senator representing Taraba South, to desist from parading himself as the governorship candidate of the APC. The judge ruled that all the result sheets could not be written in the same writing. He also believed the returning officer who declared that no primary was held in the state and added that the electoral officer was at a police headquarters due to security threats.

President Muhammadu Buhari, in separate letters of request, has urged the Senate to approve the issuance of promissory notes totalling over ₦402 billion ($566 million). The first request amounting to ₦375 billion, was read at plenary by the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, and it was meant to settle outstanding claims owed various exporters. Other similar debt payment requests, contained in the letter, were to be routed through the Debt Management Office (DMO). They are ₦6.706 billion for the Kebbi State Government for the construction of federal roads in the state and ₦2.706 billion for the Taraba State Government, also for the construction of federal roads. Buhari, in another request, also read at plenary by Lawan, also sought the Senate’s approval for the issuance of ₦18.623 billion for the Yobe State Government. The president, in his letter, said the payment of ₦18.623 billion to the Yobe State Government through the DMO, would help the state to offset all monies expended on the execution of five different federal road projects in the state. The president, in the two letters, appealed to the senators to treat his requests with dispatch.

The House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts, on Tuesday, summoned the Acting Accountant General of the Federation, Mr Okolieaboh Sylva, over his office’s failure to lay the 2020 financial records of Ministries, Department and Agencies, of the federal government before the National Assembly in line with the constitution of the land. The Chairman of the Committee, Hon. Oluwole Oke issued the summon in Abuja at the resumed hearing of the Committee on queries raised against MDAs by the office of the Auditor General for the Federation. Hon. Oke frowned at the development lamenting that it was affecting the parliament’s work of looking into the financial transactions of the MDAs, and said that such “would no longer be tolerated.” He, therefore, warned all the heads of the MDAs who have refused to appear before it over audit queries raised against them to retrace their steps and do the needful in their own interest, saying that the Committee would have no other option than to effect the arrest of the defaulters or relocate its sitting to the premises of such MDAS. “We must look for the needed money to finance the 2023 budget to cater for the needs of the entire populace,” he stressed.

Forces in Ethiopia’s Tigray region said troops from neighbouring Eritrea started a full-scale offensive on Tuesday while heavy fighting was taking place in several areas along the border. Two aid workers also reported intense fighting along the border, including shelling into a displaced persons camp on the outskirts of the village of Ziban Gedena. They did not say whether Eritrean troops were on the ground in Tigray. The U.S. special envoy for the Horn of Africa, Mike Hammer, said on Tuesday that the United States was aware of Eritrean troops crossing into Ethiopia’s Tigray region and condemned it. “Eritrea is deploying its entire army as well as reservists. Our forces are heroically defending their positions,” Getachew Reda, a spokesman for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), said on Twitter. Getachew said Ethiopian troops and special forces from the Amhara region to the south had also joined the offensive.