Ken Nnamani: The Man Who Sold His Conscience

 By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

Kenechukwu (Ken) Nnamani, trustee of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), and leader of the party in South-East Nigeria is about to embark on a book tour with a story about how he, as Senate President in 2006, stood between a rampant President Olusegun Obasanjo and a constitutionally impermissible Third Term.

                   *Ken Nnamani (2nd left) greets President Buhari 

His book is impressively titled Standing Strong. The story would ordinarily be a bestseller if its release was not timed to coincide with the Anambra State governorship election in which Ken Nnamani leads the charge on behalf of Andy Uba, the candidate of the APC, who was coincidentally Obasanjo’s bag-man for Third Term. What Ken seeks to do is plainly grubby and disreputable and he needs to be told so in clear terms.

From Buhari To Adeosun: The Ethical Question

By Sufuyan Ojeifo

The resolution of three episodes of corruption between 1999 and 2005 in the federal legislature and the executive arm of government under the presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo had initially indicated the seeming gravitas of that administration.  But, to be sure, it was not Obasanjo’s persona or the magnitude of his philosophical swagger that gave fillip to the seriousness attached to the anti-corruption actions, which fatally extinguished the luminous epochs of some politicians and public office holders at the time.

*Kemi Adeosun 

The soberness, in fact, derived from the interplay of the unfortunate tomfoolery in government and the collective appreciation as well as interrogation by Nigerians of the universal concepts of good and bad or right and wrong that defined public perception of governmental interactions in the ecology of the nation’s prevalent cloak-and-dagger politics. The whiff of that political correctness had conferred on the administration a false garb of propriety in official conducts and public finance management.

Biafra Is A Challenge, Not A Solution

By Emeka Asinugo

The current agitation for the unconditional release of the director of Radio Biafra, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, and the resuscitation of the Biafra nation became more intense after Kanu was arrested during his visit to Nigeria from the UK about a month ago. Before then, the Nigerian government had nothing to worry about a rather distantly located “pirate” radio station and whatever influence it may have been exerting on any section of the country.

Because I recently wrote about Nnamdi Kanu and the Biafra dream, I would not have liked to be dragged into the issue of Biafra any longer. But after listening to my colleague Emma Agu addressing the Biafra issue on YouTube, I was obviously disturbed. Mr Agu and I worked in the defunct Nigerian Statesman newspaper in the early 1980s and I know that he is a respected veteran journalist.

I was disturbed because I know that the Biafra issue is not a matter anyone can conveniently wish away or easily dismiss with a wave of the hand. Biafra was a reality. It happened. And that is perhaps why, in his wisdom and foresight, the universally respected Igbo writer, Professor Chinua Achebe, wrote his last book and titled it “There was a Country”.

Indeed there was.

The Nigeria-Biafra war ended about 45 years ago. And if you take a cursory look at what is happening, you will find that the people demonstrating in Nigeria and Overseas about Biafra and Nnamdi Kanu are all below 45 years of age. Most of them were possibly born in the Biafran side of Nigeria during the war. Their birth certificates say they are Biafran citizens. Those of us who live in Europe and America know what that means. We know the value and importance of birth certificates.

Some of these people who were born in Biafra could have witnessed what happened to their families during the war with the eyes of childhood. And the experience could have remained indelible in their minds. When the war ended, Nigeria did not address this issue of Biafran birth certificates. So, as far as those children born in the Biafran side of Nigeria during the war are concerned, they are Biafrans.

Soon after the war, General Yakubu Gowon introduced his ‘3Rs’ – an acronym for reintegration, rehabilitation and reconstruction. It was his vision of implementing his National Development Plan [NDP], following his “no victor, no vanquished” declaration at the end of the war. 

It is 45 years since. Yet, most Igbo who were either born in Biafra or fought on the side of Biafra are yet to be reintegrated and fully rehabilitated into the Nigerian mainstream. Some of them come from the Igbo heartland. Others come from such riverside areas as the Niger Delta Region. Marginalization which was the foundational cause of the Nigeria-Biafra war is still very much the problem of the nation.