The presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Muhammadu Buhari, was on Monday barred from using Mapo Hall for the southwest launch of his campaign rally in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital. But that did not stop the former head of state, who was greeted by a jubilant crowd which had waited hours for the event to start.

The rally had been scheduled to begin at 1pm, but kicked off around 5.20pm. Mr. Buhari, on his way to Ibadan, had stopped to visit some traditional rulers in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, and the general overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Enoch Adeboye. There had been a disagreement between the CPC and the Oyo State government over the use of the colonial-style city hall perched on top of Mapo Hill, Ibadan, over the weekend. While the CPC claimed it had paid in advance for Mapo Hall, the state government said it had allocated the hall to a team that would be hosting the nation’s first lady, Patience Jonathan, today.

The rally held on the grounds in front of Mapo Hall. ‘Liars and cheats’ According to Yinka Odumakin, the spokesperson for Mr. Buhari, the state government’s decision to deny the CPC the use of Mapo Hall again exposed the ruling PDP and its leaders as a gang of cheats, liars and an integrity-deficient outfit. Mr. Odumakin attached a receipt, given to the party after it booked the hall, to a statement he issued. He said that the police had been informed of the date and venue of the rally, and approval had been given.

“It was to our consternation that the management of the facility rudely informed our officials, who went to prepare the venue 48 hours to the D-Day, that we could no longer use the place because the wife of the president, Patience Jonathan, would be holding an event at the same venue 24 hours after our rally.”

Mr. Odumakin said. He also spoke harshly about the governor of Oyo State, Adebayo Alao-Akala, describing him as a liar for adding “a ridiculous dimension to the whole saga when he lied that the hiccup was because we changed our rally date”. “The attached receipts from Ibadan Local Governments Properties Co. Limited, the official managers of Mapo Hall, showed the date CPC booked Mapo Hall and the subsequent official acceptance of CPC’s use of Mapo Hall on the new rally date, 14th March 2011,” he said. “This contradicts the false account of the Oyo State government.” Presidential promises Speaking to the crowd of supporters, Mr. Buhari gave his assurance that rigging would be impossible in the next election, saying “there is no more culture of rigging in Nigeria”.

The former head of state urged the people to take the elections seriously and ensure that they did not only vote, but also protect their votes by following them up to the collation centres. “We will make sure that every penny in the treasury belongs to the people and is spent on them,” he said. “All the CPC candidates will be completely accountable to the people who entrust them with power when they get to power.”

Reeling out his agenda, the CPC candidate said the party planned to provide jobs, good roads, potable water and security across the country. Speaking earlier, Tunde Bakare, vice presidential candidate of the CPC and pastor of the Latter Rain Assembly, Lagos, urged Nigerians to vote for his party, saying they would rewrite the history of the country and bring back its lost glory. Mr. Bakare said that the party was taking the issue of education seriously as well as planning to return the country to true federal status. Party matters Mr. Buhari presented the party’s flag to Adebayo Shittu as the Oyo State governorship candidate, a move which settled the controversy over who would fly the party’s gubernatorial flag. The national leadership of the CPC had formally endorsed the candidacy of Mr. Shittu as flagbearer, but the crisis still persisted. Mr. Shittu and another candidate, Taiwo Ibrahim, had emerged from parallel governorship primaries held in the state.

The special assistant on public affairs to the 87 years old Anthony Enahoro, Olawale Okuniyi, has assured Nigerians that the elder statesman is alive and recuperating.

Mr. Enahoro's failing health created anxiety in the public domain on Monday.

"Chief Anthony Enahoro is still very much alive," Mr. Okuniyi said. He acknowledged that Mr. Enahoro, accompanied by his eldest son, Ken, was rushed to the University of Benin Teaching Hospital at about 1.30pm on Monday when his health deteriorated.

According to him, he is under close medical observations of his doctors at the UBTH.

"His health is currently stabilising in Benin, the Edo State capital, after an initial relapse occasioned by stress and old age," he said...

He explained that the statesman had been under close medical guidance for some time due to weakness associated with old age.

Mr. Okuniyi further expressed appreciation to well-wishers, associates, and the general public as well as the international community, on behalf of the Enahoro family, for their concern and prayers.

It was God luck that initially saved those 33 miners when the mountain collapsed, but it was not luck that kept them alive

Mining created Chile. The story of men who go down into the mountain and chip away at minerals in the darkness and then suffer an accident that leaves them at the mercy of that darkness is part of the DNA of Chile, an integral part of the country's history. It was one of the first things I learned about Chile when I arrived there in 1954 at the age of 12.

"Open your books to the story El Chiflón del Diablo," our Spanish teacher said on the first day of class. "The Devil's Tunnel by Baldomero Lillo. Written in 1904."

It was a story very much like the one that, many decades later on 6 August 2010, would afflict the miners of San José. It is all there – how the earth devours those who dare to probe its depths, in that classic story and all the others that Lillo wrote at the beginning of the 20th century and that every child in Chile studies. Those 33 miners could not know when they read those stories in school that they would someday be living that terror. They could not know that more than 100 years after that fiction was written that the conditions of mining life, the risks to the miners and the inhumane exploitation would be basically unaltered.

People around the world have been amazed at how the 33 miners have organised themselves in shifts, generated a hierarchy of command and crafted a plan for survival drawing from all the skills they have accumulated through their working lives. I am not in the least surprised. This has always been how Chilean workers have endured and persisted in the face of tremendous challenges. It is the legacy of those who extracted nitrate and who, at about the time that Lillo was writing about the torments of miners, were establishing the first trade unions, reading groups and newspapers of the Chilean working class. Those lessons of unity, fortitude and orderliness were handed down from father to son to grandson. It was what each male needed to know in order to outlive the disasters that could befall him in a merciless environment.

Of course, it was luck that initially saved those 33 miners when the mountain collapsed. But it was not luck that kept them alive. Inside them was the training and stamina inherited from forefathers, murmurs from those who were not willing to die over and over again in the darkness. There was a miracle at work, therefore, in San José, but to focus exclusively on good fortune is to perhaps miss the true and deeper significance of what happened. It begs the real question..

How is it possible that, more than a century after Lillo's stories denounced the inhuman conditions of men toiling underground, that insecurity and danger persist? How many more accidents like this one will be needed before legislation to mandate safeguards is enacted and workers can descend into the mountain without putting their lives needlessly at risk?

These 33 miners are now international heroes, with the world celebrating their rescue and their progress towards the light.

By one of those coincidences that history loves, these men were buried at the moment when the latest statistics show that the percentage of Chileans living in poverty has, for the first time since the end of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship, gone drastically up rather than down.

Is it too much to hope that the ordeal these men have gone through will trouble the conscience of Chile and create a country where, 100 years from now, the stories of Baldomero Lillo and the story of the 33 miners from San José, will be a thing of the past? Now that would be a real miracle.