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The All Progressives Congress in Ekiti State has said it has uncovered a plot by the state leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party to compromise voting materialsin favour of President Goodluck Jonathan.

It asked the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Professor Attahiru Jega, and all election monitors to put Ekiti State under special watch to forestall electoral fraud.

A statement by the Publicity Secretary, Taiwo Olatubosun, on Sunday said the allegation could not be ignoredconsidering the latest revelations in a leaked audio file that INEC materials were allegedly compromised by PDPin June 21 Ekiti governorship poll to favour its then candidate, Ayodele Fayose.

Olatubosunsaid, Our fear is not without basis. Nigerians and indeed the whole world have heard Fayose talking on Ekitigate tape about how he collected INEC soft copies and got them printed to manipulate the poll to secure victory. They also heard how the military provided cover to subvert democracy in Fayoses favour.

We are calling on Jega that we have it on good authority that Fayose has again printed fake ballot papers as usual to exchange with INEC original ballotson Friday nightpreceding election day.

Olatubosun alleged that the plan was to exchange the ballot papers in the night ofFriday March 27just as it was done in the night ofFriday June 20, 2015.

He urged Jega, INEC officials and security agents to ensure that ballot papers were not distributed at night, pleading that the distribution be done in the morning in the presence of party agents.

He added that Jega should put his staff under intense surveillance to avoid compromise with polls riggers.

The APC also alleged that Governor Ayodele Fayose, his Ondo State ally and their agents were in possession of fake army uniforms to be worn by the thugs allegedly imported into the state three weeks ago.

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PDP planning to compromise voting materials Ekiti APC

The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress in Benue State, Chief Samuel Ortom, has urged security agencies to hold the Benue State Government under Governor Gabriel Suswam responsible for the recent spate of kidnappings and political violence in the state.

Ortom spoke when the Executive Secretary of the National Human Rights Commission, Prof. Bem Angwe, led a delegation from the commission on a visit to him in Makurdi on Friday.

He said that reliable sources had revealed that the people who took oath to protect lives and property had abandoned their responsibilities and compromised their positions by training a militia group and equipping it to wreak violence in the forthcoming polls.

He said a grand plan by the government to use the militia to kidnap prominent APC members and supporters had commenced with the kidnapping of the Provost of the College of Education, Katsina-Ala, on allegations that he was a supporter of the party.

According to the former Minister of State, Industry, Trade and Investment, the objective of the plan is to intimidate and scare the APC and its supporters from participating in the forthcoming polls, adding however that the plan is bound to fail.

He said that armed youths on the convoy of the governor destroyed the APC offices, flags and posters in the Ukum, Katsina-Ala, Logo and Buruku local government areas.

Ortom stated that his campaign organisation had compiled all the destruction which Suswam and the ruling Peoples Democratic Party had done to the APC campaign property in the state and would forward same to the commission for necessary action.

He appealed to the authorities to intervene as the restraint and tolerance of victims had been stretched to the limit.

Prof. Angwe, in his comments, said he was on an advocacy visit to sensitise stakeholders to see elections as a civic duty and political office as a call-to-serve and not a do-or-die affair.

He said the mandate of the commission included the investigation of allegations by victims of political violence and that its findings and decisions were as binding as court judgements.

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Hold govt for kidnappings in Benue

The All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Organisation, has denied a claim by the Peoples Democratic Party, that APC Presidential candidate and former military Head of State, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari is an Islamic fundamentalist prone to terrorist leanings.

It said that a PDP advertisement which was promoted by an opinion article in Washington Times by a one-time US ambassadorial aide turned media manager, Richard Grenell, was the handiwork of a failed President and his ruinous party, the PDP to tarnish the hard won credibility and integrity of Buhari.

In a swift reaction in Abuja on Sunday, the APCPCOs Director of Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, in a statement said the PDP was only clutching to irrelevant and irreverent decoys after abandoning serious issues of lack of power, insecurity, disunity, unemployment, infrastructural decay, comatose economy, and dysfunctional educational and health sectors, among others that affect the lives of the citizens and are concrete and poignant to the polls.

He said, The PDP is a troubled-cannon; firing salvos in all directions, accidentally and incidentally, without caution, care or conscience. With the stark reality of defeat staring them in the face on March 28 and April 11 general elections, a reward for their maladministration, incumbent President Jonathan and his co-travellers have intensified their global campaign of calumny and outright fallacy their well-known stock in trade.

Nigerians are yet to forget the phoney phone call to the King of Morocco that never was or the futile effort to stop Buhari from speaking to the world at UK think tank at Chatham House, where their rented crowd confessed to being paid for a hatchet job.

Shehu said Grenell is not a US ex-envoy but a former spokesperson for four past US Ambassadors to the United Nations.

According to him, Grenells firm Capitol Media Partners was recruited by the Presidency and the PDP to say unfortunate statements about Buhari, stressing that Grenell made the statements not as an envoy or diplomat but as a media contractor for the Presidency and the PDP.

The APC Spokesman said the latest lie by the government and the PDP underscores the new low to which Nigerias foreign policy drift has sunk under the Jonathan government, which hires all manners of local and global quacks, to manage their tattered image marked by cluelessness, incompetence, squander-mania, meteoric corruption and dearth of developmental ideas.

Meanwhile, the APCPCO said it had been vindicated on its stance of not participating in the presidential campaign debates, owing to the fact that the organizers, the Nigeria Election Debate Group had been compromised.

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Buhari, not a fundamentalist APC

Inspector General of Police, Suleiman Abba

Women groups of the All Progressives Congress and Labour Party in Ekiti State have vowed to protect their votes during the March 28 presidential poll in spite of the vote and go home order of the Inspector General of Police, Mr. Suleiman Abba.

The groups spoke on the platform of Action Group of the APC on Saturday during an APC women summit organised in Ado Ekiti to drum support for the partys presidential candidate, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) and his running mate, Prof. Yemi Osibajo (SAN).

The summit was attended by the LP women and supporters of a member representing Ekiti-Central Federal Constituency 1, Mr. Opeyemi Bamidele.

A Labour Party chieftain, Chief Remi Oguntuase, said Nigerians were tired of the Peoples Democratic Partys 16 years of misrule, saying Buhari/Osinbajo administration would usher in a new lease of life that would turn around the fortunes of the country.

Speaking on behalf of the women, former Commissioners under the Kayode

Fayemi-led government, Mrs. Ronke Okunsanya and Mrs. Bunmi Dipo-Salami, as well as the APC women leader, Mrs. Modupe Ogundipe, reiterated the commitment of women to stand against any form of rigging during the poll.

Delivering a paper at the summit, the Executive Director, Women Advocate Research and Documentation Centre, Dr. Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi, said there was no law in the land that barred the electorate from waiting behind after and voting to monitor and protect their votes.

She lamented that election rigging had always been the cause of violence in the country since 1922.

The human rights activist urged women to become advocates of peace and ensure that they go out massively to exercise their civic rights during next Saturdays election.

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APC, LP women groups vow to protect votes

JOEL KOTKIN: There may be no more peace in the valley

Members of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco and other activists protest outside San Francisco City Hall in January 2014. They demanded regulation of employee shuttles for companies like Google, Facebook and Apple. Private shuttle buses have created traffic problems.

JEFF CHIU, ASSOCIATED PRESS

The rise of todays progressive-dominated Democratic Party stemmed from a brilliant melding of minorities, the poor, the intelligentsia and, quite surprising, the new ultrarich of Silicon Valley. For the past decade, this alliance has worked for both sides, giving the tech titans politically correct cover while suggesting their support for the progressives message can work with business.

Not only did tech overwhelmingly favor President Obama with campaign contributions but Obama also overwhelming won the Silicon Valley electorate, taking the once GOP-leaning Santa Clara County with 70 percent of the vote. After the 2012 election, a host of former top Obama aides including former campaign manager David Plouffe (Uber) and press spokesman Jay Carney (Amazon) have signed up to work for tech giants. Perhaps even more revealing was the politically inspired firing last year of former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich for contributing to Californias Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage.

Yet, despite these ties and PC eruptions, this alliance between the ideologically and the technically advanced shows signs of unraveling. This reflects, over time, what Marxists might have referred to as contradictions between two very different worldviews: the disruptive, acquisitive, aggressive spirit inherent in entrepreneurial capitalism and the increasingly egalitarian, property-controlling instincts of the progressive Left. To many progressives, the Silicon Valley elite are no longer scrappy up-and-comers, but increasingly resemble a new oligarchy.

Like the nobles of the Middle Ages or the corporate hegemons of the industrial era, Silicon Valley billionaires are increasingly asked to take responsibility for many of societys ills. These include a wide range of issues, from feminism and race to privacy and, most critically, class inequality. Supporting gay marriage or measures to fight climate change may no longer be enough to win over progressives.

Arguably the most widely acknowledged conflict at least the raciest involves sex discrimination. From its inception as a cradle of technology, the Valleys culture has been highly masculine. Indeed, roughly 26 percent of tech industry workers are women, well below their 47 percent share of the total workforce. Nor is this likely to change soon: only 18 percent of computer science graduates are women, down from 37 percent in the mid-80s. Stanford researcher Vivek Wadhwa describes the Valley as still a boys club that regarded women as less capable than men and subjected them to negative stereotypes and abuse.

This pattern of sexual discrimination and outright misogyny has been cited in a recent suit brought by Ellen Pao, a former employee, against one of the Valleys premier venture-capital firms, Kleiner Perkins, which, she alleged, maintained a workplace steeped in sexism and locker room arrogance.

The recent attack by feminists on video games is also roiling that industry, long one of techs most profitable sectors. Some industry executives, bowing to pressure from feminists, have agreed to tone down and even alter their games story lines to makes them more acceptable to womens groups. But theres also strong blowback among game designers, who feel they may be forced to toe the party line, even in their essentially frivolous industry.

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JOEL KOTKIN: There may be no more peace in the valley