Nigeria: A Tribunal From Hell

 By Obi Nwakanma

I watched with extreme difficulty, and not insubstantial pain, the interview in Stellenbosch, South Africa, in which the poet, playwright and Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, very painfully, tried to subvert the truth about the Nigerian election, by claiming that the Labour Party “came third” and knew that they “did not win the election.” That the Labour Party had become a regional movement. That Peter Obi and the party leaders were trying to push young people into the streets to protest. 

Here, let us reproduce Soyinka in full: “One party took over the Labour Movement and then it became a regional party…my own organization has a monitoring unit, and so I could say categorically that Peter Obi’s Party came third, not even second! And that the leadership knew it. But they wanted to do what we call in Yoruba, ‘Gba Jue!’

Peter Obi And Treason

 By Obi Nwakanma

Political developments of last week have left many a Nigerian askance, wondering about what might be the endgame for this regime. The current party in government, the APC, is pushing its current agenda of “state capture” with the kind of brazenness and open defiance of public will, never recorded before in Nigeria; not even during military dictatorship. 

*Peter Obi

It would seem to most history-minded people that this generation of Nigerian politicians and political actors learnt nothing, therefore, from the past; specifically from the crisis that led to the 1966 coups and the devastating civil war from which Nigeria is actually yet to recover, 53 years after the shooting phase of the war ended.

Campaigns Of Calumny Against Me Are Demarketing The Country –Peter Obi

“In the past few days, I have observed various campaigns of calumny directed at my person, with the latest being allegations attributed to the information Minister, Lai Mohammed from Washington DC.  

“It is most unfortunate that these consistent efforts to portray me quite contrary to what I am, and my core values, is coming from such high quarters. Minister Lai accusing me of stoking insurrection is totally malicious and fictitious. 

Stop Blackmailing Peter Obi, NAC Tells FG, APC

 

*Peter Obi and his wife, Margaret, after casting their votes during the 2023 presidential election

The Neo Africana Centre (NAC) has frowned on the treason allegations leveled against Mr Peter Obi by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, describing it as baseless, malicious and in bad taste.

Mohammed, while addressing some international media organizations and groups in Washington DC on the 2023 general elections, accused Obi of treason. He told his audience that Obi was promoting insurrection in Nigeria by inciting people to violence over the outcome of the February 25 presidential elections. 

2023: Nigeria Cannot Afford An Emperor As President

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Delivering the 2022 TheNiche Lecture titled “2023 Elections And The Future Of Nigeria’s Democracy” on September 8, the guest speaker, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, former governor of Lagos State and Minister of Works and Housing, disagreed with those who hold the view that next year’s elections will be momentous. 

*Buhari and army officers 

Though Fashola admitted that “no two elections are the same; and the intensity always varies anyway as indeed the number of voters and sometimes the number of parties; and the novelty of some candidates,” he nonetheless orated that rhetoric like “this will be a most defining election; this will be an election like no other; and so on and so forth… is common in every democracy and at the onset of a new election cycle,” and no one should be surprised hearing them.

Buhari And Conspiracy Theories: Mahmud Jega Is Right

By Moses Ochonu

I study Northern Nigeria for a living. I am a Lugardian Northerner. I grew up in and schooled in Northern Nigeria. I know that conspiracy theories have a high resonance in the region. I know that implausible and sometimes ridiculous alternative explanations and alternative facts circulate in the region to devastating effect.

*Buhari 

Conspiracy theories led to non-Muslim fellow Nigerians being killed in Kano shortly after the beginning of the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. The ignorant interpretation of cosmic and climatic events as recompense for sin by some Muslim clerics led to Christians being attacked in Maiduguri when there was a solar eclipse--years before Boko Haram emerged.

Conspiracy theories and outright fabrication about insults and plots against Islam got Gideon Akuluka and Grace Usha beheaded in Kano and Gombe respectively. I know several northerners who are Truthers, believers in the theory that the 9/11 attacks were the work of the US government and/or Jews. I have seen posts written by Northern Nigerians on my Facebook timeline alleging that jews and/or Americans created ISIS to destroy Islam. Such posts garner many likes from Northern Nigerians.

Until Buhari's election, there was a cottage industry of conspiracy theories about Boko Haram being the work of the CIA or of being a plot by then President Jonathan to destabilize the North. Former Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State even went to Washington DC to spout this nonsensical theory, lending executive credence to a previously fringy contemplation. Some Northern Nigerians alleged that the US and French governments were supplying weapons to Boko Haram to destroy Islamic solidarity and pit Muslims against one another.

One interlocutor even told me that his village people had seen some Baturai (white people) among the terrorists, insinuating that that was proof of Western backing for Boko Haram. The abiding power of this particular conspiracy theory is the reason that when stories circulated in the wake of the capture of Camp Zairo in Sambisa about a "white man" being among the captured insurgents" the stories was a particularly enduring sensation in Northern Nigeria. In fact, Northern Nigerians dug up and widely circulated photos of the moment Cameroonian soldiers rescued a German hostage released by Boko Haram several years ago. The fake photo gave the story even more resonance in Northern Nigerian social media circles. The story found a primed audience in Northern Nigerians because it confirmed what many already believed. Its spread was aided by the existence of confirmatory bias in the region.