Buhari’s Unholy Romance With Niger Republic

 By Ochereome Nnanna

President Muhammadu Buhari’s romance with Niger Republic has become an affront to the national interest of Nigeria. When he was sworn-in as an elected president in 2015, he went to Mamadou Issoufou’s presidential palace in Niamey, Niger Republic, to celebrate. They gave him the reception of a conquering Fulani warlord: a white horse and sword. 

         *President Buhari with Mahamadou Issoufou 

of Niger Republic 

I found that curious. How can a Nigerian leader celebrate his electoral victory in a foreign country and not Daura, his supposed hometown in Nigeria? The answer has since been provided through Buhari’s policy actions in the past five plus years. We have since learnt that Buhari is a first-generation Nigerian whose father, Ardo Adamu Buhari, a duck seller, had migrated from Niger, settled in Nigeria and married a Nigerian woman, Zulaihat. 

Making Nigeria Work Again

 By DAN AMOR

There is a lamentable and disturbing magnitude of violence in Nigeria. So is crime. The country is constantly on the boil. The atmosphere in the country has been nothing but a tawny volcano. The situation conveys at once the chief features of the Nigerian spirit: it is vertical, spontaneous, immaterial, upward. It is ardent. And even as tongues of fire do, it turns into fire everything it touches. What we are experiencing today is induced by poverty, hunger, frustration, apathy and desperation. 

                                                                  *Buhari 

There is no more thermometer to measure the degree of frustration and desperation in the land than the long closure of our tertiary institutions, especially our universities due to strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) since the past eight months. 

Is President Buhari From Niger Republic?

 By Reno Omokri

Any follower of Nigeria’s federal budget since May 29, 2015, may be forgiven if they thought that Nigeria, under President Buhari, had performed a Hitler-style Anschluss, and had annexed Niger Republic as part of Nigeria, because of Buhari’s huge spending (of Nigeria’s money), to improve infrastructure in Niger Republic.

                                                           *Buhari

While Seme Border-Badagry express road, the only road currently linking Nigeria to other West African coastal nations, remains in ruins and looks as if it has been bombed, Buhari had spent huge resources developing road networks between Nigeria and Niger Republic.

On February 26, 2020, the Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, announced that the government had awarded a contract for the construction of two roads from Sokoto and Jigawa States up to Niger Republic, at the cost of $81 million dollars.

Scorpions And Frogs Of Nigeria

 

By Yinka Odumakin

 I was talking of how comprehensive incompetence of some of our compatriots who lack ability to lead is doing much damage to this country and may sentence it to death if we don’t reset quickly. 

The wonder in the piece was the likely dangers we face with those who went to hold a sectional meeting in Kaduna and still had the shameless gut to be mouthing “indivisibility” and other words they don’t know the meaning. The apartheid gathering had in attendance all Arewa big men holding federal appointments. I mentioned that those who attended that meeting and sanctioned it would do other million things wrong and would not see anything wrong with them because they can’t just see it because they are narrow and have no regard for others. 

We had yet to put that behind us when news filtered in that the Federal Government which had shut the Western borders with other Western countries had opened them for northern businessman, Alhaji Aliko Dangote. The action sparked rage in the country. I particularly noticed the forthrightness of Mr Atedo Peterside in condemning the largely inconsiderate action that shows disregard for other businesses that have been dealt a deadly blow for several months. Ghanaians who have been taking it up against Nigerians in that country can now see what the government is doing to Nigerians. 

Ken Saro-Wiwa: 25 Years After

 By Dan Amor

Today, Tuesday November 10, 2020, indubitably marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the tragic and shocking death of Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa and eight of his Ogoni kinsmen, in the evil hands of professional hangmen who sneaked into Port Harcourt from Sokoto in the cover of darkness. By his death, the Sani Abacha-led military junta had demonstrated, in shocking finality, to the larger world, that it was guided by the most base, most callous of instincts. As a student of Nigerian history, and of the literature of the Nigerian Civil War, I am adequately aware that Ken Saro-Wiwa, against the backdrop of our multicultural complexities allegedly worked against his own region during the War, the consequences of which he would have regretted even in his grave. 

                                                       *Ken Saro-Wiwa 

But I write of him today not as a politician but as a literary man and environmental rights activist. We remember him because, for this writer, as for most disinterested Nigerians, Ken Saro-Wiwa lives alternatively as an inspirational spirit, and a haunting one at that. Now, as always, Nigerians who care still hear Ken's steps on the polluted land of his ancestors. They still see the monstrous flares from poisonous gas stacks, and still remember his symbolic pipe. Now, as always, passionate Nigerians will remember and hear the gleeful blast of the Ogoni song, the song Ken sang at his peril. Yet, only the initiated can see the Ogoni national flag flutter cautiously in the saddened clouds of a proud land. But all can hear his name in the fluttering of the Eagle's wing. 

D. O. Fagunwa And His Overbearing 'Helpers': A Novelist's Predicament

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Whenever the full history of Nigerian literature is written, Daniel Olorunfemi Fagunwa (popularly known as D.O. Fagunwa), the Yoruba language novelist, will certainly occupy his rightful place as one of its pioneers. Although literate in the English language, Fagunwa chose to put his indigenous language in the limelight by employing it in the writing of his novels which not only enjoyed wide readership among the Yoruba-reading population of the then Western Nigeria, but also attracted critical response from both Yoruba and non-Yoruba scholars.

                                         *D.O. Fagunwa

Given Fagunwa's education and exposure, it may be unfair to draw the conclusion that he was blissfully unaware of the limitations he was imposing on himself in terms of readership and critical appreciation when he chose to write in Yoruba. What seems more likely the case is that he was willing to sacrifice on the altar of cultural and linguistic nationalism the fame he would certainly have gained beyond his ethnic block and the hefty financial reward that would have come rolling to his doorstep had he chosen English as his medium of expression.

According to Professor Ayo Bamgbose, although “Fagunwa…was quite familiar with certain works in English literature, including translations of stories from Greek mythology...two possibilities were open to him. He could use his knowledge of English literature to produce a European type of novel…or he could create something of his own, drawing his inspiration from traditional material. It was the latter course that Fagunwa chose. Fagunwa based his novels on the tradition of the Yoruba folk-tale (Bamgbose, 1974).”

Nigeria: Slippery Pathway Called Political Correctness

 By Dianam Peresuo Dakolo

Among citizens with undying commitment to peaceful coexistence, social harmony and cohesion, political correctness is something of a religion: words or actions with the slightest tinge of antipathy or antagonism are anathema, to be avoided at all costs, so the polity is free of threat(s) to its stability. Desirable as such a predisposition could be, citizens need to appreciate that cost-benefit analysis is a key principle for any type of enterprise. Some illustration of how hurtful political correctness could be to a society should not be out of place here.

                                        *Jonathan, Obasanjo, Buhari 

The human and material resources that have been consumed by the insurgency in the North East are incalculable. Brilliant and courageous military officers and others of the rank and file have all perished and continue to be wasted till date; a hundred plus schoolgirls from Chibok have yet to be recovered from the world's deadliest death cult known as Boko Haram, and, of course, the hundreds of billions of naira that have gone into counter-insurgency operations translate into humongous opportunity cost for the country.  Now, do Nigerians not know those behind Boko Haram? Naming names and demanding decisive action on the part of the authorities goes against the grain where political correctness is something of an ethos.

Nigeria: Situational Tribalists And A Naïve Populace

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye  

I have said it so several times that when Nigerian politicians converge to map out plans for acquiring power, which, in most cases, practically translates to securing unlimited access to unearned wealth, they do not usually remember that they came from different ethnic blocks. At such gatherings, they will all think alike, talk with one voice and even look and laugh alike. They will speak the same language.

Indeed, illicit accumulation and all forms of corrupt activities do not have tribal marks. The colour of graft is the same any day, no matter who is involved.

At such times, the masses are hardly remembered. They do not matter at all. Everybody is preoccupied with the much he or she would be able to accumulate and cart away for his personal luxury and that of his family and cronies.

In the introduction to my book, “Nigeria:Why Looting May Not Stop,” I maintained that corruption became very monstrous in Nigeria “when public office gradually ceased to be a platform for rendering selfless service and transformed into the easiest route to criminal accumulation of wealth. And the law, too, became increasingly very weak in the face of the overwhelming sleaze. Since then, generations of public officers have passed through this route, looting the country blind with utmost impunity and quitting office into incredible abundance, without any fear of anyone ever prying into the clearly unearned wealth they flaunt with revolting fanfare…”