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Two PDP Deputy National Chairmen Claim Secondus’ Post

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As five NWC members meet to fix NEC meeting

Two substantive national deputy chairmen of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Elder Yemi Akinwonmi (South) and Senator Nazif Sulieman (North) have locked horns over who should take over the national chairmanship position of the party in acting capacity following the court order on Prince Uche Secondus to step aside.

In a new twist in the ongoing leadership crisis in the main opposition party, Suleiman declared Akinwonmi incapable of assuming the post even when the party’s constitution favours him.

The Deputy National Chairman (South) was the first to declare himself the acting national chairman on Tuesday citing Section 35(3) (b) of the PDP constitution, which says that in the event of the removal or resignation of the national chairman, a national deputy chairman from his zone should assume the post in an acting capacity.

Pursuant to this, Akinwonmi had issued a statement proclaiming himself and also announcing the indefinite postponement of the National Working Committee (NWC) meeting planned for Tuesday.

In explaining that he assumed the office in the absence of the substantive National Chairman, Prince Uche Secondus, who was ordered by the court to stop parading as such, Akinwonmi said: “Section 35(3) (b) of the constitution of the Peoples Democratic Party empowers me to summon and preside over party meetings in the absence of the national chairman.

“Our attention was drawn yesterday evening to a court order which purports to restrain our National Chairman, Prince Uche Secondus, from summoning and presiding over the meetings of the organs of the party.

“In the foregoing circumstances, as Deputy National Chairman (South) of the Peoples Democratic Party, after due consultations and in the exercise of the aforesaid powers, [I] hereby deem it fit and proper to postpone the National Working Committee meeting earlier scheduled for today till further notice to allow for broader consultations in the overall interest of our party,”

However, Suleiman, in a press conference later in the day, said he was the one that has become the acting national chairman of the PDP.

He conceded that going by the constitution, a deputy national chairman from Secondus’ South zone ought to act in his stead but has not been attending meetings because he is allegedly incapacitated.

Suleiman said based on this, he, as the other national deputy chairman of the party, has assumed the position in an acting capacity and has now fixed a meeting of the National Executive Committee (NEC) for Friday.

He said this followed a meeting of the NWC, which he presided over on Tuesday attended by only five of the 18-member committee.

Suleiman explained why he took over the top PDP post: “Members of the NWC, we will recall that this morning we are in possession of a valid court order, from a high court in Degema, Rivers State. Issuing an order removing Secondus as a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as well as National Chairman of our great party.

“A court has also ordered that from the 23rd of August 2021, Prince Uche Secondus should stop parading himself as a National Chairman. NWC hereby comply fully with the court order.

“Consequently, the NWC hereby calls for an emergency NEC meeting on Friday, 27th August 2021, at 10 am prompt to deliberate on matters affecting the party.

“You are all aware PDP is a law-abiding party, the party that follows due process. So we have received this order and this is it.

“And in line with the constitution of the peoples’ democratic party, and I quote ‘functions of a deputy national chairman, there shall be two deputy national chairman, one shall come from the northern part, while the other from the southern part of the country. Deputy national chairman shall perform the following functions: 1) assist the national chairman in the discharge of his duty. 2) perform such other functions as may be assigned them. 3) In a result of resignation, removal, death, incapacitation or absence of the national chairman, a deputy national chairman from the region part of the country where the national chairman originates from shall assume office as the national chairman in an acting capacity

“Without prejudice to section 47 (6)of the Party Constitution. 4) in the absence of the National chairman and the deputy national chairman from the region part of the country where the National chairman originates from, the other deputy national chairman shall act as national chairman without prejudice to 47 (6) of this Constitution.

“On this note, distinguish NWC members I hereby take full charge of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as Chairman in an acting capacity.

“We have waited this morning for the deputy national chairman (south), who has been incapacitated, who has not been attending NWC meeting in the last 9 months and I believe there was a communication between the deputy national chairman (south). Like you know, in the absence of the deputy chairman south, I take full charge. So, I am hereby calling for an emergency NEC meeting on August 27, 2021, at 10 am prompt to deliberate.

“And I believe all the leaders of this party, the owners of this party, will be in attendance are our governors, former presiding officers will be part of the NEC meeting to deliberate all pending issues.”

On whether there is now a division in the NWC, Suleiman explained: “Let me make this very clear that this meeting was called for 2 pm and like I said, the deputy national chairman south has been incapacitated and did not attend any meeting in the last 9 to 10 months as far as NWC is a concern. He has not been in communication with any member of the NWC for the last 10 months. And like I said this party must continue its process.

“And if I am not available someone else will take over. If the national chairman is not available someone will take over, if the deputy national chairman south is not available, the deputy chairman north will take charge.

“This is the resolution that was passed by the expanded caucus. And this was the resolution passed by the NWC in our last meeting and we all agreed that there will be a meeting today, a meeting that was supposed to be presided over by the National Chairman. Unfortunately, the court order came from a competent court and stopped the chairman from acting as chairman of the party.”

Drama soon continued as Akinwonmi stormed the Wadata Plaza national secretariat of the PDP hours after Suleiman spoke to say that he is the authentic acting national chairman of the party.

Accompanied by the 2019 governorship candidate of the party in Ogun State, Ladi Adebutu, Akinwonmi asserted that fate has bestowed to the office on him, declaring that there is no victor, no vanquished in the crisis.

He appealed to party members to join him in running the affairs of the party.

The new PDP acting national chairman stated: “I am a man of peace, not a man of crisis. PDP has a good succession order. There is order here. The chairman is followed by the deputy national chairman one (South), followed by the deputy national chairman two (North).”

On the meeting presided over by Nazif, the acting national chairman said “everything conducted while I was not here is null and void. At the appropriate time, we will call on a meeting of National Executive Committee, NEC and the Board of Trustees, BoT.”

When informed about Suleiman’s assertion that he was incapacitated, Akinwonmi responded: “Sickness is not a friend of anybody. I was on my way to Wadata Plaza when I had a stroke in my car. I was at the Cidacrest hospital for three months. Anybody can be sick but I am getting back and better. It was not my making to be sick. In the past, I could not stand up but I stood up singing the national anthem here this afternoon.

“It is wrong for people to start making reference to my ill health. Anybody can be sick but I am getting better now.”

Also speaking, the National Secretary of the party, Ibrahim Tsauri, said no faction exists in the NWC, adding that Nazif only presided over the meeting of the working committee earlier because Akinwonmi was not present at the time.

He added: “NWC was one under Secondus and there was no division. We are here to adopt the doctrine of necessity. PDP is a law-abiding party, with people of integrity and respect. PDP is the only political party in Nigeria today. We never changed our name, we never changed our logo.

“Yesterday (Monday), we were faced with something very challenging, which we never expected. We have no other option but to accept the order of the court. There are people that took this matter to court. We have given the judgement to our lawyers to study.”

Culled from the Tribune News Nigeria

Lifestyle

Kaduna Governor Commissions Nigeria’s First 100-Building Prefabricated Housing Estate

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Kaduna, Nigeria – November 6, 2025 — In a major milestone for Nigeria’s housing sector, the Governor of Kaduna State has commissioned a 100-unit mass housing estate developed by Family Homes and executed by Karmod Nigeria, marking the first-ever large-scale prefabricated housing project in the country.

Completed in under six months, the innovative project demonstrates the power of modern prefabricated construction to deliver high-quality, affordable homes at record speed — a sharp contrast to traditional building methods that often take years.

Each of the 100 units in the estate is designed for a lifespan exceeding 50 years with routine maintenance. The development features tarred access roads, efficient drainage systems, clean water supply, and steady electricity, ensuring a modern and comfortable living environment for residents.

According to Family Homes, the project represents a new era in Nigeria’s mass housing delivery, proving that cutting-edge technology can accelerate the provision of sustainable and cost-effective homes for Nigerians.

“With prefabricated technology, we can drastically reduce construction time while maintaining top-quality standards,” said a spokesperson for Family Homes. “This project is a clear demonstration of what’s possible when innovation meets commitment to solving Nigeria’s housing deficit.”

Reinforcing this commitment, Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna State emphasized the alignment between the initiative and the state’s broader vision for affordable housing.

“The Family Homes Funds Social Housing Project aligns with our administration’s commitment to the provision of affordable houses for Kaduna State citizens. Access to safe, affordable and secure housing is the foundation of human dignity. We have been partnering with local and international investors to frontally address our housing deficit,” he said.

Also speaking at the event, Mr. Ademola Adebise, Chairman of Family Homes Funds Limited, noted that the project embodies inclusivity and social progress.

“The Social Housing Project also reflects our shared vision of inclusive growth, where affordable housing becomes a foundation for economic participation and improved quality of life.”

Karmod Nigeria, the technical partner behind the project, utilized its extensive expertise in prefabricated technology to localize the process, employing local artisans and materials to enhance community participation and job creation.

Industry experts have described the Kaduna project as a blueprint for future housing initiatives nationwide, capable of addressing the country’s housing shortfall more efficiently and sustainably.

With this pioneering development, Kaduna State takes a leading role in introducing modern housing technologies that promise to reshape Nigeria’s urban landscape.

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The Pioneer’s Burden: Building the First Private Network in a Vacuum of Power

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  • Book Title: The Making of Bourdex Telecom
  • Author: David Ogba Onuoha Bourdex
  • Publishers: Bourdex
  • Reviewer: Emeaba Emeaba
  • Pages: 127

In the history of Nigerian entrepreneurship, stories of audacity often begin with frustration. A man waits hours in a dimly lit government office to place a single overseas call, his ambitions held hostage by bureaucracy. From that moment of exasperation, an empire begins. Such is the animating pulse of The Making of Bourdex Telecom, David Ogba Onuoha Bourdex’s sweeping autobiographical account of one man’s effort to connect the disconnected and to rewrite the telecommunications map of Eastern Nigeria.

At once memoir, corporate history, and national parable, the book reconstructs the emergence of Bourdex Telecommunications Limited—the first indigenous private telecom provider in Nigeria’s South-East and South-South regions—against a backdrop of inefficiency, corruption, and infrastructural neglect. Its author, a businessman turned visionary, narrates not merely how a company was built but how a new horizon of possibility was forced open in a society long accustomed to closed doors.

Bourdex begins with a stark diagnosis of pre-deregulation Nigeria: a nation of over 120 million people served by fewer than a million telephone lines. Through a mix of statistical precision and personal recollection, he paints a portrait of communication as privilege, not right—of entire regions condemned to silence by state monopoly. His storytelling thrives in such contrasts: the entrepreneur sleeping upright in Lagos’s NET building to place an international call; the Italian businessman in Milan conducting deals with two sleek mobile phones. That juxtaposition—between deprivation and effortless connectivity—serves as the book’s moral axis.

From these moments of contrast, Bourdex constructs the founding myth of his enterprise. What began as an irritation became a revelation, then a crusade. “I saw a people left behind,” he writes, “a region cut off while others dialed into the future.” His insistence on framing technology as a means of liberation rather than profit underscores the moral ambition that threads through the book. The Making of Bourdex Telecom reads not like a manual of business success but like an ethical manifesto: to build not simply for gain, but for dignity.

As the chapters unfold, Bourdex’s narrative oscillates between vivid personal storytelling and granular technical detail. He recounts his early business dealings in the 1980s and ’90s, the bureaucratic mazes of NITEL, and the daring pursuit of a telecommunications license under General Sani Abacha’s military government. There is a cinematic quality to his recollections—the tense midnight meetings in Abuja, the coded alliances with military officers, the improbable friendships that turned policy into possibility.

These sections recall Chinua Achebe’s The Trouble with Nigeria in tone and intention: both works diagnose the systemic failures of governance but find redemption in individual initiative. Yet Bourdex’s narrative differs in form. Where Achebe offered moral critique, Bourdex offers demonstration—an anatomy of perseverance in motion. He documents the letters, negotiations, and international correspondences with Harris Canada, showing how an indigenous company emerged through sheer force of will and global collaboration.

Such passages risk overwhelming the reader with acronyms, specifications, and telecom jargon—R2 signaling, SS7 interconnection, E1 circuits—but they also lend the book an authenticity rare in corporate memoirs. What might have been opaque technicalities become, under Bourdex’s hand, instruments of drama. The machinery of communication becomes metaphor: wires and waves as extensions of faith and tenacity.

To situate The Making of Bourdex Telecom within Nigeria’s socio-political history is to confront the paradox of private enterprise under public decay. The book chronicles the twilight of NITEL’s monopoly, the hesitant dawn of deregulation, and the emergence of entrepreneurial actors who filled the void left by government paralysis. In this sense, Bourdex’s story parallels that of other indigenous pioneers—figures such as Mike Adenuga and Jim Ovia—whose ventures in telecommunications and banking transformed the national economy from the late 1990s onward.

Yet Bourdex’s tone is less triumphant than reflective. He does not romanticize deregulation; he portrays it as both opportunity and ordeal. The government’s inertia, the labyrinthine licensing process, and the outright extortion by state agencies form the darker undertones of his tale. His clash with NITEL’s leadership—recounted with controlled indignation—stands as one of the book’s most gripping sequences. When a senior official demanded an illegal payment of ₦20.8 million for interconnection rights, Bourdex’s defiant reply, “You are not God,” rang out like an act of civil disobedience. In such moments, the narrative transcends the genre of business autobiography and enters the moral theatre of national reform. The entrepreneur becomes citizen-prophet, challenging a corrupt establishment with the rhetoric of justice and self-belief. That blending of economic narrative with civic conscience is perhaps the book’s most compelling feature.

Stylistically, The Making of Bourdex Telecom occupies an intriguing space between oral history and polished memoir. The prose is direct, rhythmic, and often sermonic, reflecting its author’s background as both businessman and public speaker. Anecdotes unfold with the cadences of storytelling; sentences sometimes pulse with the energy of spoken word: “Amateurs built the Ark. Professionals built the Titanic.” The repetition of such aphorisms imbues the work with a sense of conviction, though occasionally at the expense of subtlety.

Where the book excels is in its evocation of atmosphere—the dusty highways between Aba and Lagos, the sterile corridors of power in Abuja, the crisp air of Calgary where the author first glimpsed technological modernity. These scenes transform what could have been a linear corporate chronicle into a textured work of memory.

Still, the narrative structure is not without flaws. The absence of an external editor’s restraint is occasionally felt in the pacing; digressions into technical exposition or moral reflection sometimes interrupt narrative flow. Readers accustomed to the concise storytelling of international business memoirs—Phil Knight’s Shoe Dog or Elon Musk’s authorized biography—may find the prose dense in places. Yet such density mirrors the complexity of the terrain Bourdex navigated. His sentences, like his towers, are built from layers of persistence.

Beyond its entrepreneurial chronicle, the book doubles as social history—a record of Eastern Nigeria’s encounter with modernization. The chapters on “The FUTO Boys,” a cadre of young engineers recruited from the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, offer a microcosm of the new Nigerian professional class emerging in the late 1990s: educated, idealistic, and determined to prove that technical expertise could thrive outside the state. Their improvisations—installing antennas by candlelight, building networks amid power outages—embody the collective grit that sustained Bourdex’s vision.

The narrative’s cumulative effect is generational. Through the story of one company, we glimpse a society in transition—from analogue isolation to digital awakening. The book captures that liminal moment when the sound of a dial tone became a symbol of freedom.

Running through The Making of Bourdex Telecom is a persistent theology of success. Bourdex attributes every turn in his journey to divine orchestration: friendships “placed by the Invisible Hand,” setbacks reinterpreted as “divine redirections.” Such language, while characteristic of Nigerian entrepreneurial spirituality, acquires here an almost literary force. It recasts corporate history as providential narrative, where the invisible infrastructure of grace mirrors the visible architecture of towers and transmitters.

For some readers, this piety may feel excessive; yet it provides the emotional coherence of the book. The author’s faith is not ornamental—it is constitutive. Without it, the story of Bourdex Telecom would read as mere ambition. With it, it becomes vocation.

The foreword by Abia State Governor Alex Otti and the preface by former Anambra Governor Peter Obi frame the book as both inspiration and instruction. They read Bourdex’s career as parable: the triumph of private initiative over public inertia. Yet their presence also situates the work within Nigeria’s broader discourse on nation-building. The Making of Bourdex Telecom is not only the autobiography of an entrepreneur; it is a treatise on indigenous agency—on what happens when Africans cease to wait for imported solutions and begin to engineer their own.

In this respect, the book extends its influence beyond its immediate industry. Its lessons—about courage, timing, friendship, and faith—extend to any field where innovation must contend with adversity.

Judged as a work of literature, The Making of Bourdex Telecom is direct and sincere. Its prose favors clarity over ornament, and its authenticity gives the story a compelling sense of truth. Bourdex writes not to embellish, but to bear witness—to a time, a struggle, and a conviction that technology could serve humanity. The result is a hybrid work: part documentary, part sermon, part memoir of enterprise.

As a contribution to Nigerian business literature, it deserves serious attention. Few firsthand accounts capture with such detail the messy birth of private telecommunications in the 1990s—a revolution that reshaped the country’s economic and social fabric. In its pages, we hear both the crackle of the first connected call and the larger resonance of a people finding their voice.

Bourdex’s central message endures: progress begins when frustration becomes purpose. His journey from the backrooms of NITEL to the boardrooms of international telecoms is not merely personal triumph; it is a chapter in Nigeria’s unfinished story of modernization.

In the end, The Making of Bourdex Telecom stands as more than the history of a company. It is an ode to enterprise as nation-building, and to the stubborn optimism of those who refuse to let silence define them.

See the book on Amazon: >>>>>

_________

♦ Dr. Emeaba, the author of “A Dictionary of Literature,” writes dime novels in the style of the Onitsha Market Literature sub-genre.

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Houston

Houston and Owerri Community Mourn the Passing of Beloved Icon, Lawrence Mike Obinna Anozie

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Houston was thrown into mourning on September 19, 2025, following the sudden passing of businessman and community advocate Lawrence Mike Obinna Anozie, who peacefully joined his ancestors. Immediate family member in Houston, Nick Anozie, confirmed his untimely death and expressed gratitude for the outpouring of love and condolences from both the Houston and Owerri communities.

Lawrence was born to Chief Alexander and Lolo Ether Anozie of Owerri in Imo State, Nigeria, and will be dearly remembered by family members, friends, and the entire Houston community.

An accomplished accountant, the late Lawrence incorporated and successfully managed three major companies: Universal Insurance Company, LLC, Universal Mortgage LLC, and Universal Financial Services. Through these enterprises, he not only built a thriving business career but also created opportunities for countless individuals to achieve financial stability. His contributions to entrepreneurship and community development will remain a lasting legacy.

According to the family, arrangements for his final funeral rites are in progress and will be announced in due course.

Lawrence will forever be remembered as a loving and compassionate man who dedicated much of his life to uplifting others. He helped countless young Nigerians and African Americans overcome economic challenges by providing mentorship, financial guidance, and career opportunities. His generosity touched the lives of many who otherwise might not have found their footing. A devout Catholic, he was unwavering in his faith and never missed Mass, drawing strength and inspiration from his church community. To those who knew him, Lawrence was not only a successful businessman but also a pillar of kindness, humility, and faith whose legacy of service and compassion will continue to inspire generations.

For more information, please contact Nick Anozie – 832-891-2213

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