Politics
Ambassadors: FG Screens Nominees, Fani-Kayode, Former Deputy Gov Make List
Impeccable sources familiar with the developments revealed that a former Minister of Aviation under the Obasanjo administration, Mr Femi Fani-Kayode, and a former Deputy Governor of Lagos State, Femi Pedro, are among the nominees.
The vetting is not conducted centrally, as nominees are being asked to report to the DSS offices nearest to them.
Presidency officials confirmed to our correspondent that several candidates had been contacted to provide personal education and work history.
“They’re already doing security checks with DSS. When they have cleared security checks, we will release the list.
“Only those who have been cleared are announced. The process is ongoing. I know that we should have a list before the end of this month (April),” one official revealed, preferring to remain anonymous as he was not authorised to speak to the press.
A second source said, “The vetting is not done centrally. It is based on the location of the nominees. Nominees have been reached to provide personal history and information such as where they attended school, what appointments they have held, and the like. So, it is by location.”
Tinubu’s 4Ds and funding issues
Since September 2023, President Bola Tinubu has operated his 4Ds—Democracy, Development, Demography, and Diaspora—foreign policy without ambassadors.
That month, he concluded a sector-wide reassessment of Nigeria’s foreign policy, which saw over 83 career and non-career ambassadors recalled from their stations.
Last December, reliable sources close to the President confirmed that Tinubu spent part of his holiday reviewing the names of nominees with plans to transmit a consolidated list to the National Assembly before the end of the month.
However, updates in January revealed that the President changed his mind.
Our correspondent gathered that the process suffered delays due to the paucity of funds—to the tune of $1bn —required to pay arrears of foreign service officials, settle a backlog of overheads, replace ageing vehicles and renovate embassy buildings.
One official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, “You see, the major issue is money. Not money to pay them [ambassadors], because how much is their salaries and benefits? The main money is CAPEX [Capital Expenditure]. By the time they put the cost together to fix the issues, it is running to almost $1bn.
“Most of those embassies, almost 90 per cent, are rundown. Either the residence is not good, the embassy does not have a functional office, or their rent has expired. The embassies that are buoyant may not be up to 10 as we speak.
“I understand that some of them don’t have serviceable vehicles. The last vehicles they bought were from 10 years ago. Some of them are broken down, and ambassadors cannot use such vehicles because they carry the image of the country. Some of them don’t even have power and running water. So, if you post ambassadors there today, you’re sending them to trouble.”
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, also attributed the delay to financial constraints.
“It is a money problem,” Tuggar said during a ministerial briefing in Abuja last May.
“We met a situation where foreign affairs was not being funded like it should be. Some loopholes are exploited by the likes of Binance. It is a money problem.
“There is no point sending out ambassadors if you do not have the funds for them to even travel to their designated countries and to run the missions effectively, one needs funding. Mr President is working on it, and it will be done in due course,” Tuggar said.
A foreign service official explained that though provisions had been made in the 2025 budget to cover some of that cost, the funds were hardly enough.
Nominees on the list
Senior Presidency and foreign service officers say although the complete list of nominees is highly classified, some prominent and controversial figures are being screened.
One official said, “They’re going to announce the appointments soon. They are being screened as we speak. The names of the nominees are highly classified for now because not every one of the names listed will eventually make it through.
“FFK [Femi Fani-Kayode] is on the list. These are some of the controversial names that have been put forward as well. Then there is Fola Adeola [founder of Guaranty Trust Bank Plc] and Femi Pedro too. They’re moving on with the process more quickly this time.”
Giving reasons for the slow process, another official explained that the vetting was necessary to avoid complications that might hurt the country’s standing on the global scene.
“The nominees are being vetted, and background checks are being conducted on them. It is usually done so that the nominees will not have any security issues and their deployment will not have a negative impact on the country,” the official said.
There was also a claim that Reno Omokri, a former aide of former President Goodluck Jonathan, was on the list.
But a credible source in the Presidency denied it.
“Reno is not on the list. But FFK is there,” the source said.
The President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Mr Bayo Onanuga, who earlier spoke about the delays, said nominations for ambassadorial roles must be thorough before a final list is transmitted to the National Assembly.
“Don’t forget that the ambassadorial list has two components. There are career ambassadors and political ambassadors. The foreign affairs list and the consolidated list will still go through certain processes before they are released,” he explained.
A former Kano State Governor and leader of the Kwankwasiyya Movement, Rabiu Kwankwaso, says northern political leaders conducted a deliberate assessment of potential allies before settling on Peter Obi as the most capable partner to prosecute the 2027 presidential campaign.
He dismissed concerns about a hidden power struggle between his camp and Obi’s.Politics
Kwankwaso made the disclosure in an interview on Arise TV on Monday, offering one of his most detailed accounts yet of how the North-Southeast political alliance within the NDC was formed.
“I looked around together with our leadership in the north to say, okay, who do we think is capable? Who can come and work together with us honestly so that we can move this country? Along the line, we realised that Peter Obi is at the forefront of it. That’s why we all accepted to work together,” he said.Political candidate profile
Kwankwaso, a two-term former governor of Kano State and the presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party in 2023, leads the Kwankwasiyya movement, a grassroots political force with deep loyalty across Kano and parts of northern Nigeria.Nigeria travel guide
He left the NNPP amid internal disputes before joining the NDC alongside Obi earlier this month.
Obi, a former governor of Anambra State, ran on the Labour Party platform in 2023 and drew massive youth-driven support across the South and urban centres, though he did not win.
Both men formally joined the NDC on Sunday, May 3, defecting from the crisis-hit African Democratic Congress.Politics
At the party’s national convention on Saturday in Abuja, Kwankwaso backed the NDC’s decision to zone its 2027 presidential ticket to the South, describing it as a step toward fairness, healing and national cohesion.
Responding to a question about whether the alliance concealed a quiet rivalry between both camps, Kwankwaso argued that friction between principals and their deputies was a product of greed, not structural tension.
“The problem people are having, especially leaders, is that they are too greedy to the extent that they begin to have issues. There is so much to do. You don’t have to fight your deputy,” he said.
He said his record as a former deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, and later as governor of Kano State, showed that political partnerships could hold under pressure.
“I had an opportunity to work with my speaker and we worked very well. I was in Kano for eight years despite the difficulty of my then deputy governor. We were able to work for eight years amicably to the extent that I handed over to him,” he said.
Kwankwaso extended the argument beyond his personal experience, saying the same principle applied at the federal level.
In the Senate and other places, in the NDDC, we worked amicably with people. There is so much to be done and that’s why you have even ministers, other executives, advisors and so on. I don’t see from my experiences of the past why deputies or vice would fight with the president or governor,” he said.
He grounded the alliance in Nigerian political history, tracing a lineage of productive North-Southeast partnerships from the first republic to the present.Nigeria travel guide
“Right from the beginning, this sort of alliance has been in existence. Now we are going back to what Tafawa Balewa did during their time,” he said.
He also referenced the collaboration between former Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa and leaders of the NCNC, as well as that of former President Shehu Shagari and his vice president, Alex Ekwueme, in the second republic.
“So also in the second republic, immediately after the war, our leaders, Shagari and others, worked very closely with the southeast, with Alex Ekwueme as his vice president. They are our friends. We want to work together with them,” he said.Politics
Kwankwaso also noted that subsequent administrations had shifted power-sharing away from the South-East, a pattern he suggested the current alliance was correcting.
“There was a change during the third republic where for many obvious reasons an election was annulled and the government under the military decided to bring in Shonekan from the South-West.
Even after that, the military and other leaders worked together and brought in Chief Olusegun Obasanjo from the South-West again. Even Bola Tinubu probably is a beneficiary of all that,” he said.
He was emphatic that the choice of Obi was not driven by regional sentiment alone.
“It wasn’t just because we are going to the South-West just because of the South-West. No. We realised that Peter Obi is at the forefront of it and that’s why we all accepted to work together,” he said.Political candidate profile
The movement of both men into the NDC has triggered a wave of defections, with senators, House of Representatives members and political blocs aligned with their former coalition gravitating toward the new party, rapidly reshaping calculations ahead of the 2027 elections.
The alliance pairs Kwankwaso’s northern grassroots structure and disciplined voter mobilisation with Obi’s national youth engagement and urban electoral momentum, positioning the NDC as one of the main opposition platforms set to challenge President Bola Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress in 2027
Former Kano State Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso has dismissed suggestions that his exit from the African Democratic Congress has created a damaging split in the opposition.
He said he and Atiku Abubakar may yet work together before the 2027 general election.
Kwankwaso spoke in an interview on Arise TV on Monday, responding to concerns that his move to the Nigeria Democratic Congress alongside Peter Obi had effectively divided the opposition into two competing blocs ahead of the polls.
“Now, we may still work together before the election. I personally, and I think even Obi himself, decided to leave ADC not because we are fighting with Atiku or anybody there. We decided to leave that party because we realised that there are some issues,” he said
He said the ADC was contending with three major unresolved problems that he believed would make it difficult for the party to field candidates, without specifying what those issues were.
“Whether they will be able to field candidates in that party or not is just a matter of time. It’s not like we had a primary election,” he said
The remarks come after Atiku recently claimed on Arise TV that Kwankwaso’s popularity was confined to Kano State and further divided there by Governor Abba Yusuf.
Atiku, who is seeking the presidency on the ADC platform, also described himself as the most popular politician of northern extraction, saying none of his contemporaries, including Kwankwaso, Aminu Tambuwal and Nasir El-Rufai, commanded a voter base across the North as wide as his.
Kwankwaso did not engage the slight directly, but made clear he bore no grudge.
“Politics is just like a game. I’m not fighting anybody and I’m not expecting anybody to fight me. I have no issue with that. I think we are past that level now,” he said.
He challenged those predicting a vote split in Kano to wait for the election result before drawing conclusions.
“Let’s wait for the election and see whether votes are split in Kano or not,” he said.
Kwankwaso also acknowledged a history of working with Atiku, recalling that he served as the former vice president’s northern coordinator during the 2019 presidential election.
“There was an election in 2019 in Port Harcourt. He won the election. I was his coordinator for the north. We worked for him,” he said.
He traced his broader relationship with Atiku to the 2015 APC presidential primary in Lagos, where he placed second behind Muhammadu Buhari, with Atiku third.
By Okey Maduforo, Awka
The Anambra State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has expelled 30 members of the party for instituting legal actions against the party.
The affected members include some aspirants for the National Assembly, and their expulsion may disqualify them from participating in the party’s primary elections.
Disclosing this shortly after the meeting of the State Executive Committee (SEC) of the party, the State Publicity Secretary, Dr. Sir Valentine Iyiegbu, told reporters that the decision was in line with Section 21, Subsection 5 of the party’s constitution.
“The party discussed those who took the party to court, and many of them are contesting for the House of Representatives tickets of the party,” he said.
“The matter comes up tomorrow, and the SEC stated that what the party constitution stipulates would be followed, which is outright expulsion from the party under Article 21, Subsection 5.”
“The SEC actually ratified their expulsion because they did not exhaust all the internal avenues provided by the party to resolve their grievances,” he added.
Iyiegbu noted that the only reprieve available to the expelled members would be for them to withdraw their court cases.
“It is only when the matters are withdrawn from the court that the party can consider listening to them,” he said.
Speaking on the party’s primary elections, he explained:
“In the case of those contesting for the tickets of the Federal House of Representatives, all the eleven positions have aspirants, while for the Senate, the three positions are also being contested. The screening committees were here to perform their duties,” he noted.
The party also ratified the appointment of a five-man Primary Elections Committee headed by Sir Izuchukwu Okeke, the State Organising Secretary of the party.
By PETRUS OBI
Frontline aspirant for the Aninri/Awgu/Oji-River Federal Constituency seat, Anayo Onwuegbu, has successfully completed the screening exercise conducted by the All Progressives Congress House of Representatives screening panel in Abuja ahead of the party primaries scheduled for Friday, May 15, 2026.
Speaking after the exercise, Onwuegbu expressed satisfaction with the screening process, describing it as a reflection of the party’s commitment to internal democracy, transparency, and credible leadership selection ahead of the 2027 general elections.
The aspirant, who is seeking to represent Aninri/Awgu/Oji-River Federal Constituency under the platform of the APC, stated that he remains focused and prepared to continue to offer quality representation to the people of the constituency.
According to him, “The process once again highlights our party’s commitment to internal democracy, transparency, and the emergence of credible leadership as we prepare for the 2027 general elections.”
He reaffirmed his dedication to the development of the constituency, pledging to serve the people with commitment and purpose if elected.
The APC House of Representatives primaries are expected to hold nationwide on Friday as aspirants battle for the party’s tickets ahead of the 2027 elections.
By Okey Maduforo, Awka
Ten communities that make up Anaocha Local Government Area of Anambra State are set for a showdown with their traditional rulers following the alleged suspension of the zoning arrangement for the Anambra State House of Assembly elections.
Recall that on April 7, 2022, the traditional rulers, in a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), resolved that the House of Assembly seats for Anaocha I and Anaocha II constituencies would rotate among the ten communities, with each town occupying the seat for two terms.
The traditional rulers further resolved that the rotation would subsist irrespective of the political party through which lawmakers emerge, noting that the arrangement was aimed at ensuring that all ten communities have the opportunity to produce members of the State Assembly in the interest of equity and fairness.
However, the Anaocha Equity Forum, shortly after its meeting, expressed concern over the alleged suspension of the zoning arrangement.
Speaking, the Convener of the Anaocha Equity Forum, Mr. Valentine Okoye, said the forum would not take kindly to what it described as acts capable of destabilising the council area, adding that any such move would be resisted.
“This is a Memorandum of Understanding signed by our traditional rulers, and it has been respected until now. We in the Anaocha Equity Forum see this as a slap on the sensibilities of the ten communities that make up the area,” he said.
“We urge members of the public, political parties, and stakeholders to disregard the alleged position of the traditional rulers, as it does not represent the views and aspirations of our people.
“Our traditional rulers should be mindful of their roles as fathers of their respective communities. They should also understand that they would be held responsible for whatever backlash or consequences may arise from this recent position.
“We call on Governor Charles Soludo to call the traditional rulers to order so that the peace currently enjoyed in Anaocha Local Government Area will not be disrupted,” he stated.
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