Forgive Me, Lagos Staff Bus Driver In Train Crash Begs Victims

 The driver of the Lagos State Government staff bus that was involved in the incident that led to a train colliding with the bus at the PWD/ Shogunle railway line, on the Agege motor road in Lagos, on Thursday, has appealed to victims of the accident to forgive him.

The PUNCH reports that some survivors said the 44-year-old driver, Oluwaseun Osinbajo, had his earpiece on while driving and ignored the directive of the Flag Officers at the rail line.
The driver, however, blamed the incident on a mechanical fault in the bus.

The driver, who works with the Lagos State Ministry of Transport, was also said to have been transferred to the State Criminal Intelligence and Investigations Department.

He was said to be overheard narrating to some of his relatives who were waiting for him there.

“It was not my fault. How could I have ignored warning signs? The bus had a mechanical fault,”The Vanguard newspaper quoted him as saying.

“It is a pity this has happened. I beg everyone affected to please forgive me in the name of God.”

The PUNCH reports that streaks of dried blood, broken glass, and wrung metal plates lined the rail tracks right opposite the PWD Bus Station, Shogunle, Ikeja.


Trapped in the squashed vehicle were sweaty faces, tired breaths, and bloodied bodies, struggling to find their way out to the rays of the morning light above.

Earlier, residents watched in shock how an oncoming train collided with a staff bus, filled with passengers en route to the Alausa Secretariat, Ikeja, from Ikotun, pushing them metres away before coming to a halt.

Saturday PUNCH also gathered that the driver of the BRT had veered into the rail track despite signs from the level crossing flag bearers and other motorists urging him not to do so as a train was oncoming.

Emergency responders had conveyed many of the casualties to the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja GRA.

About 79 of 85 passengers on the bus were revived and treated for different injuries and subsequently transferred to Gbagada General Hospital, Agege General Hospital, and the trauma centre at the toll gate area of the state.

Speaking to journalists shortly after visiting the injured at LASUTH, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu disclosed that 85 people were involved in the accident out of which 42 had moderate injuries, 29 had serious injuries, and eight with mild injuries.

Presidential Poll: Why Pollsters Got Outcome Wrong

 In the buildup to the 2023 general elections, many opinion polls were conducted, projecting the likely outcome of the presidential election. But the results indicated that the opinion polls were largely wrong in their predictions. In this analysis, experts have advanced reasons why pre-election polls in Nigeria don’t conform with outcomes.

Many opinion polls were conducted ahead of the February 25 presidential election in the country.

Polls are a survey of public opinion from a particular sample group, and can be useful in informing politicians about the views of specific groups of the electorate

They help politicians understand what the public wants and tell who is popular at the ballot box.

But how accurate were the opinion polls in respect to the outcome of the February 25 presidential election?

Although victory was largely predicted the way of Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), the poll was eventually won by the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu after results from the 176,846 polling stations were counted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Tinubu scored 8,794,726 votes, representing 37 per cent of the votes cast, while the main opposition candidates Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had 6,984,520 votes (29%) and Labour Party’s Peter Obi polled 6,101,533 votes (25%).

Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) came fourth with 1,496,687 votes.

Pollsters’ predictions

In a series of polls commissioned by ANAP Foundation and conducted by NOI polls Limited (NOIPolls), Obi was predicted as the winner. In the poll published in September and December 2022, as well as February 2022, Obi was placed in the lead.

“Our third and final poll result in February 2023 reveals that Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) remains in the lead, with Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the APC and Atiku Abubakar of the PDP both trailing him. Rabiu Kwankwaso of the NNPP emerged as the lone outsider.

“Peter Obi leads, with 21 per cent of registered voters proposing to vote for him if the presidential election were to be conducted today, and 13 per cent proposing to vote for Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who fell in second.

“Alhaji Atiku Abubakar was third with 10 per cent and Rabiu Kwankwaso was a distant fourth with 3 per cent of voters proposing to vote for him,” said Atedo Peterside, the president and founder of the foundation in the poll report.

ANAP, which credited itself to have used the same methodology that rightly predicted the winners of the 2011, 2015 and 2019 presidential elections, however, noted that given the large pool of undecided voters and/or those who refused to disclose their preferred choice, Peter Obi’s 8 per cent-point lead at this stage is significant but not sufficient to separate him from a leading pack of candidates scoring 13 per cent, 10 per cent and 3 per cent.

Also, Bloomberg News polling 2,384 Nigerians from January 26 to February 4 via a smartphone app noted that two-thirds of respondents said they intended to vote for Obi.

“Of the 93 per cent of participants who said they had decided how to vote, 66 per cent named Obi as their preferred choice. Obi scored a slightly higher 72 per cent among decided respondents in an earlier premise poll was released by Bloomberg in September as the official election campaign kicked off,” it stated.

In the same vein, Nextier SPD poll released on February 5 indicated that Obi was leading (37%) ahead of Atiku (27%) and Tinubu (24%).

On February 7, a Lagos-based data company, Stears, announced that Obi would win with 41 per cent of the votes ahead of Tinubu (31%) and Atiku (20%) “as long as Nigerians followed through on their stated intent to vote.”

The result of the We2Geda Foundation poll on September 17, 2022, showed Obi ahead of other contenders with 51 per cent of the votes, Atiku had 25% and Tinubu 19%.

According to a poll conducted by POLAF, Atiku was predicted to emerge the winner in a close race. According to the organisers, the poll had the largest sampling size of 3,123,660 respondents across 165 local government areas contacted via telephone and were spoken to in English and any other native language they were most comfortable speaking in.

In the POLAF poll, Atiku secured 38 per cent to emerge as the preferred candidate, followed by Tinubu, who got 29 per cent, while Obi secured 27 per cent to take the third position. Kwakwanso was a distant fourth with only 5 per cent of the total votes.

However, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research and analysis division of the Economist Group, predicted a win for Tinubu, basing its outcomes on the political dynamics in the country.

The EIU anchored its prediction on the internal wrangling in the PDP and Obi’s emergence, which would eat into PDP’s strongholds in the South East and South-South.

Also, a four-week opinion poll coordinated by FREDDAN Continental predicted a win for Tinubu. It stated that 37.2 per cent of 287,033 respondents preferred Tinubu, followed by Obi’s 32.1 per cent, while Atiku was selected by 30.7 per cent of total respondents.

The poll also suggested a clear win for Tinubu on the first ballot as against some other predictions that there may be a rerun.

Also, Enough is Enough (EiE) in its poll, had predicted a second round, noting that no candidate would win at the first ballot.

The co-founder and head of intelligence, Stears, Michael Famoroti, noted that the company rightly predicted the outcome of the 2023 polls.

He noted that while the basic Stears poll put Obi ahead with 27 per cent of the votes compared to 15 per cent for Tinubu and 12 per cent for Atiku, a first-of-its-kind electoral prediction model correctly projected that a low turnout scenario (29%) would be a victory for the APC candidate.

“Separately, we predicted an Peter Obi victory in a high-turnout scenario (roughly 85% turnout) and maintained that prediction, even under a turnout scenario of 45 per cent.

“The Stears prediction model was also accurate at state level. The basic poll results put Peter Obi marginally ahead of Bola Ahmed Tinubu in Benue State. But, once the model was applied to the poll results, the order flipped as we projected that Bola Ahmed Tinubu would win Benue by a single percentage point, exactly as it played out.

“The Stears prediction model accurately projected a critical APC win in Kwara State and an LP upset in Lagos State,” he added.

Why pollsters got polling wrong – Experts

Noting that polls are important in understanding public opinions, some experts opined that certain factors limit the relevance of the exercise in Nigeria.

The vice chancellor of the Federal University, Kashere, Gombe State, Professor Umar Pate, who underscored the importance of survey in both public and private practices, noted that the methodology adopted in a poll was as important as the outcome.

The revered media scholar, who also said it was important to identify the pollsters, their objectives, capacities to conduct a poll and the instruments used among others, added that some of the organisations conducting polls in Nigeria were in cahoots with politicians, thereby denting the credibility of the exercise.

The executive director, Development Specs Academy, Prof Okey Ikechukwu, on his part, noted that some of the polls lacked merit and were mere projections because they were built on faulty methodology and small sample size.

He also argued that there were some external factors beyond the control of the pollsters, which might make the outcome of the election to be different from the polls. He said such factors included intimidation, violence, suppression, manipulation and other hitches witnessed during the conduct of an election.

“Polls are relevant where several factors can be guaranteed, including the right sample size, right stratification of the demographics (their age, education, biases etc). Most importantly is the credibility of the pollsters,” the public communication and media professional noted.

An associate professor of Journalism and pioneer director of the Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC) of the Lagos State University, Dr Tunde Akanni, stressed that “in most cases, the pollsters are not independent, which is why the codes of conduct prepared for journalists covering elections highly recommend that in reporting the outcome of electoral polls, they must also report the profile of the organisers of polls so that their audience would know the biases or interest of the pollsters.

While noting that well conducted polls have the capacity to guide the public in making choices and empowering politicians to know where and how to intensify their campaigns, he counselled media consumers not to take results of polls “hook, line and sinker because of the biases of pollsters who might be commissioned by desperate politicians seeking to boost their profile ahead of an electron.”

The president of the Nigeria Political Science Association, Professor Hassan Salihu, said opinion polls were losing relevance in Nigeria because pollsters were biased.

“This is why you see that in the opinion polls conducted, people were just off the mark because they left substance and allowed sentiment to guide what they did. But like I said, where it is well conducted, it is a good measure of what should happen and what is happening. So it should be encouraged, but in the Nigerian context, it has been bastardised. People have inputted all kinds of sentiments into it, and that is why you see a wide gap between what has been predicted and what later happened,”

How Alpha Beta Helps Lagos Improve Revenue Generation

 They combine the work Remitta does for the federal government and, the work Interswitch did for FIRS by providing an online tax management solution in the form of Taxpromax.

Before ABC came, MDAs had their own bank accounts that were also monitored by the state treasury office (STO), they collected revenue independently & reported them to the state government periodically.

This was difficult to track in real time cos even after payments were made, there was usually a long process of reconciliation to properly determine what was revenue to the state or administrative revenue to MDAs.

That system also allowed a lot of corruption cos even after paying to banks, MDAs were responsible for issuing revenue receipts. This is without factoring the MDAs that were even collecting cash.

ABC created a system where citizens could use a unique ID to pay state revenues and, all revenues paid could be accounted for,organized & reported in real time.
This stopped the payment of state revenue into MDA accounts, everything went directly into the state treasury account.

In addition to this, the system automatically generates a treasury receipt as you pay at the bank, this stopped the issuance of treasury receipts by MDAs and, only Banks could issue these receipts once payments were made

The System made it possible for MDAs to verify payment claims by citizens, it also made it possible for citizens to verify their payments and easily get a statement of their payment history without stress..

It allowed LIRS & other MDAs build proper database of revenue paying citizens & organizations in the state, this was good for planning and also allowed the state to know where it was lacking in terms of revenue drive.

In recent years, ABC’s services have gone beyond creating a platform for reporting & aggregating state revenue, they also created a digital tax administration solution known as the Etax platform for LIRS.

This platform was introduced fully in 2019, it leverages on an open standard platform which enables enterprise wide data, greater transparency and increased taxpayer self-services.

Taxpayers can file returns, get assessed, object assessments and forward necessary documents for reconciliation without leaving their homes/offices. it was very helpful during the covid lockdown,reason Tax Revenue went up from 349bn in 2019 to 356bn in 2020 despite Covid

Besides the fact that ABC has provided some of these services to Lagos, they have provided some of these services to other Nigerian states at one point or another, including but not limited to Bayelsa & Plateau..

They’ve also provided some of these services to some regional governments across Africa..
Today,many states have engaged companies that provide similar solutions,Kaduna, Delta & FCTIRS use theirs.
FIRS has TAXPROMAX provided by interswitch and, FG has Remitta like I said earlier

As erroneously believed, ABC does not collect taxes for LIRS or any MDA, they just provide the technology and platform that allows MDAs work effectively.

@MustaphaNdajiwo has corrected me on this, the Taxpromax solution was developed by FIRS but, they only partnered with payment solutions companies like interswitch.
Thank you

We Will Occupy Your Offices Nationwide, LP Tells INEC

 The Labour Party has threatened that it will call on its members to occupy offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission nationwide for allegedly frustrating its petition against the outcome of the 2023 presidential election.

The spokesman for the Presidential Campaign Council of the party, Dr Yunusa Tanko, in a statement obtained Saturday, accused INEC of disobeying the order of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal directing the electoral umpire to grant the party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, access to the certified true copies of materials used in the conduct of the poll.

“It will be recalled that the aforesaid order of the presidential election petition tribunal was duly served on INEC on March 3, 2023, despite the fact that they were present and represented at the tribunal when the Order was made.

“Not minding the service of the said order on INEC, and a reminder letter dated March 6, 2023, and delivered same date at the INEC Headquarters Abuja, the electoral umpire has continued to ignore and or disobey the valid Order of such magnitude till now,” Tanko said.

The PUNCH reports that the Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja on March 3 granted the request of the Peoples Democratic Party presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and his LP counterpart, Obi’s request to inspect the election materials used during February 25 presidential poll.

Atiku and Obi had approached the Presidential Election Court to seek permission for the inspection of election materials used during the poll.

The PUNCH also reports that Atiku and Obi refused to concede defeat in the February 25 presidential election, vowing to recover their mandate in court.

The two candidates rebuffed the gesture of conciliation made by the President-elect, Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, who in his acceptance speech after he was declared the winner of the poll asked them to support him in the task of building the nation.

Both the PDP and the LP rejected the election results over alleged rigging, and voter intimidation among other reasons.

Reacting further, Tanko said, “The action of INEC under reference also constitutes for all intent and purposes, an act of judicial insubordination and willful refusal to comply with the order of court.

“As we speak INEC has chosen to obey the court order given to it to reconfigure the BIVAS machine, which they doing right now and ignoring the order granted to us to inspect electoral materials.

“We, therefore, call on the general public to note the level of lawlessness and brazen disobedience to a lawful order of a court by an important statutory agency such as INEC, and which is a well-calculated attempt to undermine and frustrate the presentation of the petition by the Labour Party and its presidential candidate before the tribunal in good time.

“We, therefore, want to state that we will not fail to call our supporters to march to INEC offices nationwide in a non-violent protest which is allowed by law.”

Rain Of Worms Falls Down The Sky In China, Residents Panic

 Citizens of the Chinese province of Liaoning were told to find shelter after it looked like it started to rain worms.

A viral clip showed the area apparently being showered with little worms, which were splattered all over cars.

The video showed residents covering themselves with umbrellas as they go along with their routines and wander past.

While the cause of the slimy creature calamity has yet to be uncovered, the scientific journal Mother Nature Network suggested that the animals were dropped after being swept up by heavy winds.

The periodical also noted that this type of occurrence happens after a storm when insects are caught up in a whirlpool.

Another theory suggested that the worms were actually poplar flowers — a tulip tree whose blooms resemble the squirmy beasts.

Viewers were stunned by the city’s current problem, with one person stating: “These are not worms or animals, but flower stalks dropped from trees.”

Someone else claimed that the video was fake and looked like a prank.

“Strange phenomena,” a user added, with another weighing in, “If i was just minding my business on a casual day in China and it started raining worms ?? i’d just die.”

A similar odd event went down last December when it was believed that iguanas could rain down from trees in Florida due to colder temperatures.

“They slow down or become immobile when it’s below 40,” WFTV meteorologist Brian Shields posted on Twitter last winter. “They may fall from trees, but they aren’t dead.”

The incident is reportedly not uncommon when colder weather hits the Sunshine state. When temperatures drop, the reptiles become stiff and tumble to the ground.

While thermometer plunges stun the invasive reptiles, the iguanas won’t necessarily die. Many will simply wake up as temperatures rise.