Showing posts with label General Olusegun Obasanjo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label General Olusegun Obasanjo. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Obasanjo Foisted Presidentialism On Nigeria; He’s Still Defending The Indefensible!

 By Olu Fasan

As they prepared to return Nigeria to civilian rule in 1979, the military regime, led by General Murtala Muhammed and later by General Olusegun Obasanjo, set up a 49-man committee to draft a new constitution for Nigeria. However, the regime gave the “49 wise men” a red line: they must not return Nigeria to the parliamentary system, practised after independence from 1960 to 1966. Instead, they should adopt the American-style presidential system. After General Murtala’s assassination in 1976, General Obasanjo took over as head of state and put his imprimatur on the draft constitution, inserting nearly 20 amendments.


*Obasanjo 

So, the 1979 Constitution lied when it ascribed itself to “We the people of Nigeria.” In truth, it was Obasanjo’s military regime, aided by a few civilian elites, that imposed the constitution and the presidential system on Nigeria. Today, over 40 years after Nigeria first practised the system, and despite its patent flaws and unsuitability for Nigeria, Obasanjo is still defending it.

Friday, December 8, 2023

Henry Kissinger: A Curse On Africa, Asia And Latin America

 By Owei Lakemfa

Henry (Heinz) Alfred Kissinger, the most infamous United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, passed away  peacefully  at 100 on November 29, 2023 and is guaranteed a marked grave. Not so for the tens of thousands Africans, Latin Americans and Asians who experienced violent deaths in their youth and had no tomb stones in their names due to the policies formulated and implemented by Kissinger.

*Kissinger 

A prolific author, brilliant academic and highly cerebral intellectual, he, like his fellow German, Adolf Hitler, used his knowledge and skills to perpetuate unspeakable crimes against humanity.

Thursday, November 16, 2023

Lessons From Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan’s Victory

 By Ayo Oyoze Baje

“Success is not measured by the position you reach, but by the obstacles you overcome” – John Harold Johnson( late publisher of Ebony Magazine)

*Natasha 
She is a rare breed; an iconic combination of brilliance, beauty, and boldness. But more than these, she has become a jinx-breaker of some sort, making history by becoming the first Ihima-born politician to climb up to the pedestal of senator-ship, in Nigeria’s chequered history of democracy.

Thursday, June 22, 2023

In Owerri, Nigerian Editors Repudiated The Idiocy Of Identity Politics

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

It is no longer news that the just concluded national bi-annual convention of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, NGE, which held in Owerri, Imo State capital, produced Eze Anaba, editor of the Vanguard newspaper as the new president. In the next two years, he and 15 other officers will run the affairs of the elite club of Nigerian editors. It is not going to be an easy task but editors are confident that the Anaba-led team will deliver.

*Anaba

It turned out to be a Guild election like no other, with difficulties more fundamental than the normal schism that characterises every struggle for power. Since the NGE was founded on May 20, 1961, at the old National Press Club in Lagos by Alhaji Lateef Jakande, who also emerged as its first president, the 2023 election was perhaps the most toxic.

Thursday, June 8, 2023

Corruption: EFCC Is Not Fit For Purpose; It’s Time To Scrap It!

 By Olu Fasan

When General Olusegun Obasanjo became president in 1999, he was under pressure from the international community to tackle corruption frontally. Obasanjo himself described corruption in Nigeria as cancerous, saying it required surgical operations. He established an anti-corruption agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, in 2003.

But 20 years later, Nigeria remains a “fantastically corrupt country” as a former British prime minister memorably put it. The cancer of corruption has festered and spread malignantly, destroying every facet of Nigeria’s polity.

Thursday, May 25, 2023

Good Riddance, Buhari: You Came, You Saw, You Failed Woefully!

 By Olu Fasan

Muhammadu Buhari, president of Nigeria since 2015, will leave office on Monday, May 29, after eight disastrous years. The late Chief Bola Ige famously coined the phrase, “good riddance to bad rubbish”. That, truth be told, is the best way to describe the exit of Buhari, his presidency and his government from power.

*Buhari 

For the past eight years of Buhari’s administration have been an unmitigated failure; a monumental waste of time, of resources, and of the hopes and aspirations of a nation and a people. True stewardship is leaving a place better than one found it. But Buhari is leaving Nigeria far worse than he found it in 2015.

Thursday, February 9, 2023

Interim Government: A Call for Anarchy

 By Reuben Abati

Yesterday morning, while on the flagship show of Arise NewsThe Morning Show - I took special notice during the newspaper review with Emmanuel Efeni and the segment titled “What’s Trending” with Ojy Okpe, of the editorial by the ThisDay newspaper of the day titled: “Interim Government: Perish The Thought”.

I pointed out that having been Chairman of the Editorial Board of a major Nigerian newspaper for 11 years, before moving on to other engagements in the public sphere, I am aware that when a newspaper publishes its editorial on the front page, as ThisDay did yesterday, it amounts to screaming, an outcry, a shout out, a call for urgent attention and a signal that the subject being talked about is most important.

Monday, December 13, 2021

Ndigbo And Fallacy Of Power Not Served A La Carte

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Nigerians love clichés to bits. But if there is anything they love more than clichés, it is their penchant to determine the fate of Ndigbo based on pre-conceived notions. As the curtain is slowly but inexorably being drawn on the Muhammadu Buhari presidency and the political silly season is, once again, upon us, those two tendencies are manifest.

As 2023 beckons, the buzz phrase these days is the fallacy that power is not served a la carte. Interestingly, that banality is only voiced in reference to the legitimate clamour for a Nigerian President of Igbo extraction.

You often hear people speaking tongue-in-cheek that “power is taken and not given”, ostensibly latching onto Gloria Steinem’s phrase that “nobody gives you power; you have to grab it,” without putting it in context as Steinem, an American feminist journalist and social political activist, did.

Monday, March 8, 2021

Nigeria: National Assembly In Chains

 By DAN AMOR

In all democratic nations of the world, there are three major arms of government: the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary. As an assembly of elected and authentic representatives of the people, the legislature makes the laws that govern the day-to-day operations of government. The executive formulates and implements policies based on the framework of the laws promulgated by the lawmakers; whereas the judiciary, as the safety valve or sole arbiter of the common man, interprets the laws of the land and adjudicates on matters arising from any breach of the law between parties to the common wheel. 

*Lawan, Buhari and Gbajabiamila
                       *Lawan, Buhari and Gbajabiamila

What makes the legislature the bastion of democracy in any society, except in a few totalitarian states, is that its functions encapsulate representation of the people, lawmaking and over-sighting the executive. This is the crux of the matter. In a presidential democracy, like the type we practise here in Nigeria, the legislature exists not only to make laws but also to serve as the voice of the people in government and to make government accountable to the people. This makes the legislature the pillar of democracy. 

Monday, November 12, 2018

Nigeria's Poverty And Social Relations

By Dan Amor
Recently, there emerged two very disturbing reports, each dealing with chronic poverty in Africa vis-a-vis Nigeria, that are very unsettling. One is from the Brookings Institution, a Washington DC-based Economic think-tank. Its report titled: "The Start of A New Poverty Narrative", was specifically based on the work of three experts who are associated with the "World Poverty Clock", an Economic Study Group launched in 2017, to track trends in poverty reduction across the world. 

The kennel of the report is that Nigeria had overtaken India as the country with the largest number of extreme poor in the world, to be seconded only by the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC. What this means is that Nigeria is the poverty capital of the world. The other one is a damning document entitled, "Report Card on World Social Progress". Released also in the United States of America by the International Society for Life Quality Studies, the report has identified the best countries in which to live in the world. These include Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria and Belgium , in that order. 

Thursday, November 1, 2018

Revisiting Jonathan’s Single Term Proposal

By Anthony Akinola
The destination of the presidency will continue to be an issue in Nigerian politics, prompting here another look at the single-term proposal.
Erstwhile President Goodluck Jonathan’s proposal of a single, six-year tenure for president and governor is not seminal but significant nevertheless.
*Fmr President Jonathan
The idea of a single-term enjoys informed opinion and was in fact forcefully presented to the Political Bureau established by the military government of General Ibrahim Babangida in 1986.  General Olusegun Obasanjo, one honest critic of the politics of the Second Republic (1979-1983) specifically suggested a single-term of six years to the bureau.

Monday, July 30, 2018

Special Status For Lagos Long Overdue

By Dan Amor
Alongside the experience of history and the role of national and international identity, the one theme that emerges in the evolution of cities throughout the continent of Europe is the impact of ideology, whether conservative, ecological, feudal or socialist. Past ideologies have created cities that are memorials to the divine monarch (Versailles), to the imperial mission (Vienna), and to utilitarianism and the pursuit of profit (Bradford). It has been suggested that the morphology of the city is not only the product of the civilization that houses it but also a factor in the creation of that civilization.
*Governor Ambode
At a more prosaic level, it is clear that in cities such as Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Helsinki, attitudes towards conservation, social housing provision and public transport reflect the contemporary dominant social-democratic ideology of the Scandinavian countries. In contrast, the development of many West German cities in the immediate post-war period occurred within the framework of a social-market economy and a certain rejection of planning resulting from the experience of twelve years of National Socialism.

Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Buhari And The Petroleum Trust FRAUD

By Ray Ekpu
It is not known to this column how close Brigadier Sani Abacha was to Major General Muhammadu Buhari by December 1983. It was Abacha who announced at the end of a few minutes of martial music on New Year ’s Eve that the government of President Shehu Shagari had been thrown into the dust bin of history. Buhari became the fulcrum of that history as Nigeria’s head of state. On August 27, 1985, there was another game, the Revolving Doors’ game. Buhari was out, thrown out, while Ibrahim Babangida, was in, thrown into the pinnacle of political power in Nigeria.
Babangida clamped Buhari into the dungeon for some months where he cooled his feet, while his colleagues were bestriding the Nigerian political and military firmament like they owned the world. Babangida left or was forced to leave the throne after eight years of dangerous foot work. He called Chief Ernest Shonekan, a successful private sector entrepreneur, to come and take the baton of leadership.

Thursday, February 22, 2018

Obasanjo: Ambushing The Emergence Of The Proper Third Force

By Alade Rotimi-John
General Olusegun Obasanjo’s Coalition for Nigeria Movement has been expressed as the former President’s projected avant garde prescription for taking beleaguered Nigeria out of the political woods into which it had been marooned by successive visionless administrations. Fiercely patriotic, Obasanjo is touted as the embodiment of the values for the preservation or continuing corporate existence of the Nigerian contraption.
*Obasanjo 
For good measure, he is an inflexible defender of the status quo. He has after all, been a major beneficiary of the system. Even as the general mood of the nation is in favour of the political restructuring of the country and of charting a proper course around the issues of good governance, equity, justice, etc. the Obasanjo intervention contained in his letter to President Muhammadu Buhari is cleverly positioned to divert attention therefrom and guide the national narrative in the direction of a prepared script.

Monday, July 10, 2017

End The Bad Blood Between The Yoruba And Ndigbo Now!

*Azikiwe and Awolowo 

By Femi Aribisala
The hatred between the Yoruba and Ndigbo has gone on for far too long. Let there be love shared among us!
The Yorubas and the Igbos, two of the most resourceful, engaging and outgoing ethnic groups in Nigeria, are becoming implacable enemies. Increasingly, they seem to hate one another with pure hatred. I never appreciated the extent of their animosity until the social media came of age in Nigeria. Now, hardly a day passes that you will not find Yorubas and Igbos exchanging hateful words on internet blogs.

The Nigerian civil war ended in 1970. Nevertheless, it continues to rage today on social media mostly by people who were not even alive during the civil war. In blog after blog, the Yorubas and the Igbos go out of their way to abuse one another for the most inconsequential of reasons. This hatred is becoming so deep-seated, it needs to be addressed before it gets completely out of hand. It is time to call a truce. A conscious effort needs to be made by opinion-leaders on both sides of the ethnic divide to put a stop to this nonsense.

Both the Yorubas and the Igbo stereotype one another. To the Igbo, the Yorubas are the “ngbati ngbati” “ofemmanu” who eat too much oil. They are masters of duplicity and deception; saying one thing while meaning another. To the Yorubas, the Igbo are clannish and money-minded. They are Shylock traders who specialize in selling counterfeit goods.
But the truth is that stereotypes are essentially generalisations and exaggerations. In a lot of cases, they are unreliable and untrue. Stereotypes must be recognised at their most effective as a joke. They are the stock-in-trade of seasoned comedians; the garnish for side-splitting anecdotes at weddings and social gatherings. Stereotypes should not be taken seriously. We should laugh at them without being offended by them.

Monday, March 27, 2017

Ndi-Igbo And The Biafran Question

By Okafor Judith
I have heard so many people ask, "Why won't Ndi-Igbo forget the memories of the 1967-70 civil war and move on?" Or "Why is it that Ndi-Igbo cannot forget the bitterness of the civil war and move on?"
Odumegwu-Ojukwu taking oath of office as
Biafra Head of State in 1967
But I have these for those who have been asking the aforementioned questions:
The countries of Europe still discuss about the 30 year war that brought about the Westphalia treaty of 1648.
The Jews have not forgotten the holocaust of 1940s.
Alexander the Great wars of over 2000 years ago are still being talked about.
Ndi-Igbo have every right to discuss about the war because Warsaw still discuss the attack on her by Germany in 1939 in their history classrooms. Learning one or two things from it.
The First World War that was fought in 1914 which disrupted the relative peace in Europe for over 100 years is still being discussed.
The US attack on Japanese two cities - Hiroshima and Nagasaki that led to the subsequent end of the Second World War is still being discussed till date.
The aforementioned Wars and among others were fought during the 17th century and early 20th century. While the Biafra-Nigeria war that was fought in the mid 20th century is the one that Ndi-Igbo should not talk about, but rather forget and move on.

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Fighting Or Celebrating Corruption?

By Egwuchukwu Hilary Ejikeme  
This country as it is presently organised does not hold any future, whatsoever, for our children. Never in the history of mankind has so much been owed so many by so few. Even though we were ignorant of it, the battle-line was drawn, ab initio, between the only two quasi-political parties I could distinguish in Nigeria: The very rich versus the poor masses, the leadership as against the people, the Bourgeoisie lined up against the Proletariat.
*President Buhari 
Whether as members of the Armed Forces or the business moguls or the politicians, leadership at once becomes a melting pot of sorts. At the very top, there is no tribe, no religion, no profession, and no division. The rest of us: Police, Army, Air Force, Navy, all other Nigerian workers – public/civil servants, artisans, drivers, petty traders and what not, must rise from our slumber and seek to change and redirect the course of governance for the benefit of our children.
What successive governments have done in Nigeria, including the present Muhammadu Buhari leadership, is to celebrate, rather than fight corruption. The issue of corruption in Nigeria is more fundamental than just inundating the pages of our national dailies and plaguing the air waves with individual cases of brazen misappropriation or looting of public funds. The leadership is only playing to the gallery.
Corruption has become like an alternative source of energy in Nigeria. My friend used to complain a lot about the noise pollution and the attendant fumes of his neighbour’s generating set, but that was until he was able to buy his own generator. Today, my friend’s generator is on, almost right round the clock, regardless of what his neighbours are passing through. That is the case of leadership and corruption in Nigeria. Now former President Olusegun Obasanjo doubled as the President and the Minister of Petroleum: There was then no Nigerian, good or trustworthy enough, to fit into that position. Probably because this continued throughout his eight years in office, our own Buhari, the darling and toast of The Fourth Estate of The Realm, has unwittingly stepped into the same unwieldy shoes. But can two wrongs ever make a right?
Corruption is corruption: Any time or anywhere. When we sacrifice competence and meritocracy at the altar of mediocrity and/or federal character/quota system, it is corruption: Pure and simple. Nigeria is basically designed to fail, from the beginning. No team can ever win a match if it refuses to field its best players.

Monday, December 26, 2016

Again, Why Tinubu Must Rescue Nigerians From Buhari!

 By John Darlington
There is no denying the fact that bad economic and foreign policies can precipitate serious crises like such we experience today in Nigeria capable of sparking off dangerous political consequences thus making politicians demand arbitrary power to deal with emergency situations caused by bad government policies. When times are bad many people have no option but are often too willing to go along and support terrible things that would be unthinkable in good times. In Nigeria, for instance, we have had dictators in military garbs and it took us years of dogged fighting, dingdong struggles, and battles to return the country from military dictatorship to constitutional democracy like such Nigerians enjoyed in the past one and half decades ago.
*Tinubu and Buhari 
Prior to the freedom that held sway in the past 16 years of Nigeria's civil democratic rule, Nigerians languished under the jackboot of the military that saw the emergence of many pro-democracy groups, the most vibrant of all being the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO). Many of the NADECO chieftains who stood toe-to-toe with the military had their lives cut down by state agents calling to mind the sensational murder of Pa Alfred Rewane and others.

Bola Ahmed Tinubu, one of the vocal voices of the pro-democracy struggle was left with no option but to flee Nigeria at the period under sad review when it became clear his life was on the line. As the threat to lives hung over our heads like the ancient sword of Damocles, this writer climbed in on the bandwagon to this part of the Old World where he has been to this day watching behind the scenes in open-mouthed astonishment.

Tinubu represented and spoke for the voiceless in the Nigerian society, otherwise, he as one who is well-off could have decided not to confront the military authorities who ruled Nigeria then with a caprice. He saw the evil of the day and decided to join forces with other dissident voices to overthrow tyranny and as luck would have it, tyranny died with his boots on June 8, 1988!
Nigeria began another military adventure under the leadership of Abdulsalami Abubakar who by a twist of fate returned Nigeria to a civil democratic rule in 1997. After a hotly contested presidential election, Obasanjo a retired General and military Head of State emerged the winner and was sworn in as a democratically elected civilian president who ruled the country for eight calendar years under the platform of the Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP).
However, the ideals which Tinubu joined forces with other pro-democracy fighters to fight that Nigerians enjoyed through to 2015 is fast being eroded from Nigeria's political firmament while tyranny has staged a come-back and rearing its ugly head on the ascending order of magnitude and this, I dare say, cuts across every facet of our national life.

For starters, it is not in dispute that aspiring dictators give away their intentions by an evident desire to destroy opponents with hate concealed in their hearts, they move on to destroy every perceived opponent and we see this at play in President Buhari whose ways and actions reek of disdain for a particular tribe in our geo-polity. He has demonstrated this in so many ways during his first appearance on the Nigeria's political scene that saw the inceration of many politicians of southern extraction while their counterparts of northern extraction were detained in cosy house arrest calling to mind the detention of Alex Ekweme in Kiriki Maximum Security Prisons while President Shehu Shagari was detained in a cosy apartment in highbrow Ikoyi area of Lagos. Even when others were released they never stayed alive healthy before going the way of all flesh. Prof. Alli went blind in prison and died afterward after his release.

With Buhari's obnoxious Decree Number 4 at the period under sad review, many people were detained without trial with trumped up charges, some of them developed ailments while in detention which some of them later succumbed to in the long run. Today, however, we see a similar scenario unfolding with flagrant abuse of court order that is again attracting the attention of the international community.

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Nigeria: Living In Troubled Times

WE  are, indeed, living in troubled times. Nobody can say for sure if this is the perilous times that the Christian Holy Book predicted long time ago. Nigerians are really passing through a hellish period in the history of the country. Nigerians are no longer a ‘suffering and smiling’ people. They complain a lot these days. They do so openly as well as in the confines of their homes.
*Buhari 

Listen to telephone programmes on radio and television and hear and see the anger of these Nigerians as they lampoon the government for their misfortunes. Go to the newsstands and hear them vent their anger on our rulers and politicians, especially those in Abuja. They also have solutions to the nation’s woes apart from fighting corruption. If those in government can come out and listen to ordinary Nigerians, they would know what they are passing through now.
They would probably be in a better position to solve the nation’s many problems. Leaders should, once in a while, disguise and mix up with the masses to have a feel of what they go through as citizens of this great country.
Go to the markets and hear them abuse our politicians to no end over their misery and calamity. Go to the buka joints and beer parlours and feel the anger and frustrations of Nigerians on the economic recession. On what government said it would do but now refused to do. All Nigerians are hit by the harsh times but low-income earners are the worst hit.
The poor are already down and therefore are not favoured at all. They also bear the brunt of the hard times as prices of goods, especially food items are going up at astronomical rates with each passing day. The irony is that the rich and the poor buy from the same market. The Nigerian market does not discriminate the poor from the rich.
And there is no refuge in sight that all will be well within a short time. Nigerians are not happy the way things are going in the country now. Not even the prayer warriors among them are optimistic that things will soon get better. A bag of rice now sells for between N18,500 and N19,500 while 5-litre of vegetable oil is N3,500. Palm oil is also out of the reach of the poor as 5-litre of it sells for between N3,800 and N4,000.
The prices of other food items have also gone up. Many Nigerians are finding it difficult to feed. As things stand now, the prospect of famine looms large. The government has even warned of imminent famine should farmers continue to export their farm products.
Nigeria’s economy is in its worst shape now. Renowned economists have alarmed us of the dire situation we are in and made some useful suggestions. Even former President Olusegun Obasanjo has added his voice on what the present leadership can do to salvage the situation. We shall return to the ex-leader’s recommendations later in the article.

Sunday, October 30, 2016

Buhari’s Strategists Chasing Ants


By Reuben Abati 
President Muhammadu Buhari’s strategists, if they are at work at all, are chasing ants and ignoring the elephant in the room. They do him great disservice. Their oversight is hubristically determined either by incapacity or a vendetta-induced distraction. It is time they changed the game and the narrative; time they woke up. 
*President Buhari 
It’s been more than 15 months since the incumbent assumed office as President, but his handlers have been projecting him as if he is a Umaru Musa Yar’Adua or a Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, first time Presidents who could afford the luxury of a learning period before settling down to the job, and who in addition must prove themselves to earn necessary plaudits. In making this mistake, President Buhari’s handlers created a sad situation whereby they have progressively undermined his image. 

The truth is that Muhammadu Buhari is neither a Yar’Adua nor a Jonathan. He may have sought the office of President in three previous elections, before succeeding at his fourth attempt in 2015, but he came into office on a different template. He had been Head of State of Nigeria (1983-85) and had before then served his country at very high levels as military administrator, member of the Supreme Military Council, head of key government institutions and subsequently from 1985 -2015, as a member of the country’s Council of State, the highest advisory body known to the Nigerian Constitution. 

In real terms, therefore, General Muhammadu Buhari did not need the job of President. If he had again lost the election in 2015, his stature would not have been diminished in any way. His place in Nigerian history was already assured. That is precisely why it was possible to package him successfully as a man on a messianic mission to rescue Nigeria from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and whatever is ascribed to that in the emotion-laden field of Nigerian politics. 

He might have acquired many IOUs when he assumed office in 2015, as all politicians do, but he was not under any pressure to pay back and he was so well positioned in the people’s reckoning and historically that he could call anyone’s bluff and get away with it. That much is of course obvious. Many of the persons and groups who could claim that they helped him to get to power a second time are today not in a position to dictate to him. 

Long before such persons left their mother’s homes for boarding school, he had made his mark as a Nigerian leader. He could look them straight in the eye and cleverly put them in their place. Corrupt patronage is a strong element of Nigerian politics and so far, President Buhari has shown a determination to limit the scope of such politics. Whether that is right or wrong is a matter of political calculations, and if current intimations are anything to go by, that may even prove costly in the long run. 

Nonetheless, when a leader assumes office with his kind of helicopter advantages, it should not be expected that he would hit the ground like a tyro in the corridors of power. Not too many persons in his shoes get a second chance to return to power after a gap of 30 years. As it happened in his case, he would be expected to run the country as a statesman, not as a party man, as a bridge-builder, not as a sectional leader and as father of all.