Nigeria: 2019: Atiku Abubakar Vs. President Buhari

By Reuben Abati

There has been some clarity about Nigeria’s 2019 Presidential election, with the end of the October 7 deadline set by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the conduct of party primaries at all levels. On Saturday, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) at its convention held in Abuja, ratified the choice of incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari as its flagbearer, with a curious vote tally of 14. 8 million. President Buhari and his supporters have continuously left no one in doubt that they intend to have a second shot at power and office.

*Atiku and Buhari 

The number of party members across Nigeria who endorsed the Buhari candidacy has however raised eyebrows. 14. 8 million! In the 2015 elections, that was a little less than the same number of total votes that the incumbent got in a nationwide general vote. What is the actual number of persons on the party’s membership register – 15.6 million? Concerned observers have argued that this is an indication of the determination of the ruling party to rig the 2019 Presidential elections, in favour of a 75-year old candidate to whom they insist, there is no alternative. The No-Alternative talk is of course the height of sycophancy and the extent of its idiocy has now been exposed.

The Wailing Of Madam Oluremi Tinubu

By Modiu Olaguro

"For what Ricardo foresaw was the end of a theory of society in which everyone moved together up the escalator of progress. Unlike Smith, Ricardo saw that the escalator worked with different effects on different classes, that some rode triumphantly on the top, while others were carried up a few steps and then were kicked back down to the bottom. Worse yet, those who kept the escalator moving were not those who rose with its motion, and those who got the full benefit of the ride did nothing to earn their reward. And to carry the metaphor one step further, if you looked carefully at those who were ascending to the top, you could see that all was not well here either; there was a furious struggle going on for a secure place on the stairs.”

—The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers by Robert L. Heilbroner.

*Oluremi Tinubu

Remi Tinubu’s outburst on the seeming side-line of her hubby, Bola Tinubu, by the Muhammadu Buhari administration illustrates the existence of an acrimonious struggle for dominance by actors in the political space. It connotes the very fact that the poor masses of Nigeria are not the only victims of the serial subterfuge by politicians who find their thumbs useful before elections only to find their faces unworthy after.

Nigeria: Democracy Minus The PDP

By Abraham Ogbodo  

This is Nigeria’s fourth attempt at democracy hence the ongoing dispensation is aptly called the Fourth Republic. Ordinarily, some measure of mastery should be assured having gone through the same process four times over. But if nothing is learnt or mastered in subsequent performance and the approach remains constant, sheer repetition of a process is not going to translate to different outcome.

Last week, Ondo State Governor, Olusegun Mimiko visited Aso Rock Villa. It could be described as unplanned visit because the decision by Mimiko to be at the headquarters only propped up after INEC had made statements about parties and their candidates in the upcoming governorship election in Ondo State. Specifically, the governor was in Abuja to tell President Muhammadu Buhari that Ondo State is being pushed to the precipice following the decision by INEC to stay with Jimoh Ibrahim, instead of Eyitayo Jegede, as the PDP candidate in the November 26 election.

The background to all of this is rather familiar. There is a certain Ali Modu Sheriff who has become like a shadow that cannot be detached from the substance except darkness is induced. This is what has forced the PDP to have two leadership faces. Modu Sheriff is one and the other is former governor of Kaduna State, Alhaji Ahmed Makarfi. This monstrous outlook has subsisted even when the party has gone extra lengths within the prescribed rules to prove that it has only one face represented by Makarfi. Somehow, the party is not able to use all the means of communication available to it to say to who its national chairman is and who is not.

Others who seek to reap political benefits call the current state of affairs in the PDP intra-party crisis. Because the crisis is not yielding to judicial arbitration, the capacity of the party to attack and kill the snake in its house is greatly weakened too. If nothing is done, the PDP could be obliterated to free the democratic space of opposition politics. There is no other quicker way for a conscious society to migrate on its own volition from democracy to dictatorship.

For now, this whole thing about the PDP’s inability to solve its problems may taste very sweet. The official position is that the APC and the presidency have no hands in what is happening in the PDP, contrary to the belief in some quarters. The problem has been fully offloaded at the doorstep of the judiciary to crack. It is taken that the courts have the powers to decide even, in spite of the PDP, who between Modu-Sheriff and Ahmed Markafi is the authentic chairman of the party. Consequently, persons and institutions central to the imbroglio and which can at least voice opinions to create a refraction in the narrative are showing an unusual degree of piety.

How To End Governors’ Profligacy

By Bayo Oluwasanmi

Arguably, many Nigerians see state govern­ments as bankrupt. Given their financial conditions, many state governments are currently facing dire financial straits that have resulted in non-payment of workers’ salaries.

The bad news is that there is a zero chance that solutions are near. The problems are one hundred per cent caused by the governors, not by the reces­sion, not by dwindling oil revenues, and not by dwindling allocations, from Abuja.. There is pov­erty, hunger, anger, disease, killings, kidnappings, abductions and insecurity all across the states.

President Buhari and Nigerian some governors 

Former Governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu recently spoke the minds of a majority of Ni­gerians about the prodigality and profligacy of state governors. He attributed the inability of state gov­ernors to pay workers’ salaries to what he described as propensity to squander public funds on personal luxury.

Speaking to State House correspondents in May while leading a delegation of investors in the power sector to a meeting with Vice President Yemi Osin­bajo at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, he said some governors claim as much as N35 million as trav­eling allowance on one trip. According to Kalu: 

“These governors don’t have enough funds to work for their people because if you check, the money drawn as security votes, they should stop that...Un­less they stop drawing security votes, they will not have enough funds to work with and most of them are living in absolute luxury. So, it is impossible to continue living in this manner.

“Most of the governors are even living in Abuja now. They don’t live in their states. Honestly, if you look at the books very well, for a trip they make, they will take a traveling allowance of N35 million. What are you going to do with that? So, how are we going to progress? Let them sit down and do the job they are elected for.”

The governors of these insolvent states would want Nigerians to believe that their states are broke. In a state broadcast, Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State said: “I want to thank you for your pa­tience, endurance so far in the face of this strike and our financial challenges … What I don’t have I can’t give. Ekiti State is broke.” His Ondo State counter­part, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko addressing protesting workers over the non-payment of salaries for months, said: “So, we can no longer pay salaries, even when they are due…. buckle up for a financial crash, as the state is broke”.