Will Herdsmen Plunge Nigeria Into Food Crisis?

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

One of the most worrisome developments in today’s Nigeria is what appears like a firm resolve by the Muhammadu Buhari regime to continue circulating the very distressful impression that it does not know how to solve the endless aggression being unleashed in different parts of the country by Fulani herdsmen who move and operate as if there are no laws in the land capable of containing the menace of troublesome people.

The soft targets of these herders are usually harmless and toiling farmers whom they gruesomely slaughter in their farms, and innocent villagers, whose homes, according to reports, they invade mostly in the middle of the night and set them ablaze. When the people are suddenly roused from sleep by the raging inferno and run out in confusion, they are mowed down by the waiting assailants.

And despite the volume of media reports on the gory occurrences, nothing usually happens: no one will be arrested, tried and jailed. With no one raising a hand to protect or  seek justice for them, the traumatized people will weep and get tired, quietly bury their dead, that is, if they are able to find their corpses and mourn them silently, probably, fearing that any noise from them might offend their killers and bring them back for more bloody exploits. Then they will leave their village and move elsewhere in the neighbouring communities to seek shelter since their homes have been destroyed. They have become refugees in their own country for no fault of theirs.

Aisha Buhari: Our First Lady Deserves Respect

By Dan Amor

To be candid, I have never met Dr. (Mrs.) Aisha Buhari, wife of the Nigerian ruler, President Muhammadu Buhari, neither am I one of her fans. But I detest all cynical attitudes toward her based on social pretensions. I'm highly contemptuous of any attempt to put a family seal unto a divine arrangement whose antecedent can be traced to God Himself.

*Aisha Buhari 

It is patently absurd for grown up men who are supposed to be responsible family heads in their own right to be harassing another man's wife in her husband's official home more so when the husband is the president of an independent country. The reported fracas in Aso Rock Presidential Villa penultimate week, which culminated in sporadic gun shots and arrest and detention of the aide de camp (ADC) to the President's wife, is scary and condemnable, to say the least.

It is also unfortunate that some Nigerians could open their mouth so wide to condemn the First Lady for trying to protect her nuclear family from dangerous interlopers who are threatening not only to manipulate the President but also to usurp the rights of his wife to gain access to her husband.

Miss Uwaila Omozuwa: Rape And Murder So Gruesome!

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

“One life taken in cold blood is as gruesome as millions lost in a pogrom.”—Dele Giwa (Nigerian Journalist assassinated in 1986)

After five whole years of seeking admission into the institution of higher learning, Miss Vera Uwaila Omozuwa was eventually admitted to read Microbiology at the University of Benin.

*Late Uwaila Omozuwa

Obviously a very serious student, she was in no mood to joke with her studies, probably, after considering how long it took her to secure the admission. So, she would always go to the serene environment of her Church when worshippers were not around to read her books. The Church environment should be both safe and devoid of distractions. 

But on this particular day, May 27, 2020, some wicked, callous and barbarous assailants gained access to the Church auditorium where she was immersed in her books, brutally raped her and ended her life by hitting her on the head with a fire extinguisher which gave her a very deep cut. They then fled leaving her in the pool of her own blood. She was only 22 and in her first year at the university.

Is Nigeria Still Redeemable?

By DAN AMOR

Every real nation state is an historical product. It is, in Marx's celebrated phrase, "the official resume of the antagonism in civil society", but under historically determinate circumstances. As such, it is the product of the historically specific constellation of class relations and social conflicts in which it is implicated.

*President Buhari 

It may, therefore, indeed, it must, if it is not to rest on its monopoly of the means of coercion alone, incorporate within its own structure, the interests not only of the dominant but of the subordinate classes. In this quite specific sense, then, every real nation state has an inherently relative independence, including, as well, the independence to understand the dynamics of its self-made domestic crises. In consequence, therefore, the general characteristics of the Nigerian nation state today may be seen in terms of the enormity of its domestic crises and social contradictions.

NNPC: Northern Nigeria Petroleum Corporation?

By Luke Onyekakeyah

The reported lamentation of the leaders of Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), over the blatant lopsided appointments into top management positions of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), deserves attention from the Federal Government with a view to correcting it. The development makes one wonder if the organization has surreptitiously become Northern Nigeria Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

It is clear that since 1999, for instance, what used to be a pan Nigeria giant oil corporation that manages Nigeria’s “cash cow”, has been northernised by way of appointments into key positions in the organisation. The complaints and disaffection resulting from this have largely been ignored by the Federal government.

The latest appointments of 20 northerners into management positions in the NNPC while ignoring the south has raised the ante, leading to discontent as reported by ThisDay of May 17, 2020. For those looking for divisive forces threatening Nigeria, this is one of it.