Nigeria: Buhari’s Legacy As A Failure Already Sealed

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi 

President Muhammadu Buhari never ceases to confound. Even his most strident supporters, who are ever willing to cut him some slack, are gradually but inexorably coming to the inevitable reality: he is a study in hypocrisy.

His claim to higher standards is a ruse. Too often, he fails to follow his own expressed moral rules and principles.

I will come back to this shortly.

*Buhari

On August 19, the National Security Adviser (NSA), Maj-Gen Babagana Monguno (rtd.), reported Buhari as telling his Service Chiefs that he was not ready to leave office a failure.

Two days earlier, the Nigerian army claimed that at least 1,000 Boko Haram/Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) members had surrendered and army spokesperson, Brig-Gen. Onyema Nwachukwu, said the terrorists would be received, processed and passed on to the relevant agencies of government for further assessment in line with extant provision.

Babangida Should Just Apologise To Nigerians

 By Charles Okoh

For about two weeks, the nation has witnessed the activities around the 80th birthday of former military president, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. For some, especially those who have had direct dealings with him, it has been a flurry of praises for the man whom many have come to know as the Maradona and affectionately referred to also as IBB or the evil genius. 

Babangida has the unenviable record of aborting what everybody has come to accept as the best thing to happen to our electoral evolution as a nation. He scuttled the June 12, 1993, presidential election which he midwifed and for which he received accolades for organizing the best election ever held in the country. 

*Babangida 

First, it was Babangida in an interview with Arise TV, where he clearly spoke like the intelligent man that he is. He also showed that apart from the troublesome leg which has practically left him immobile, he did not disappoint with his intelligent responses to questions put before him. His ability to vividly recall all events around his life as a soldier and a military president even at age 80 stands him out as a brilliant officer. He clearly stands out among his peers and his understanding of issues within and outside the country you can hardly find that with many of our leaders today. 

Babangida And Recent Nigerian History

 By Dan Amor

To live on this sinful earth for 80 years (whether it is original or official age) is no mean achievement, especially in these terrible times when conditions have sapped real life out of comparative existence leaving the average lifespan of a Nigerian at just 55. But here is General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (retd.) celebrating 80 years with pomp and pageantry in the midst of family members, friends, associates, former colleagues and country men and women. Since Tuesday August 17, his date of birth, Nigerians from all walks of life have paid tributes to this former military President, from varied perspectives. 

*Babangida 

It is only natural that we greet such a human dynamo with overwhelming gusto. Happy 80th birthday anniversary to General Babangida. I have read big, meaty, skillfully conceived and carefully executed tributes to the gap-toothed former maximum ruler, constantly relating them to the larger story. Some have treated his story with compassion and with a critical probing pen and have achieved brilliantly their aim of following Babangida’s long journey out of the innocence of his turbulent years. Yet, since men must do their work in warmer temperatures, cold light may not be a sufficient condition for the study of men’s lives. 

Ibrahim Babangida Years: Despotism In Full Sail

 By Tony Eluemunor

Please take your mind back to 1990 when Sadd­am Hussein’s Iraq invad­ed and annexed Kuwait; the price of crude petroleum jumped because the ensuing war disrupted oil supplies. A totally unforeseen windfall, earning for Nigeria $12.1 billion. But did the windfall benefit Nigeria? A re­port put it thus: “Fiscal discipline broke down once more (because) established budgetary proce­dures were by-passed and the strategic planning processes that had been established under the Structural Adjustment Pro­gramme were largely ignored. Of major concern was the expendi­ture of the oil revenue without any budgetary authorization.”

*Babangida 

This huge amount of money was fluffed away though Nigerians had by then been suffocating under SAP for four whole years! And wait for this; the 1991 budget suffered a defi­cit spending of N35.5 billion. It was as though that oil bonanza never happened.

I know that those who celebrat­ed former Military President Ibra­him Badamosi Babangida (IBB) as Nigerians best ruler as he turned 80, never failed to mention the Na­tional Economic Reconstruction Fund (NERFUND) the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) Peoples Bank of Nigeria (PBN) the Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DIFRRI) and others as programmes and bodies he established. But have they told us how such benefitted Nigeria?

Six Days With Kumuyi: The World At His Feet

 By Banji Ojewale

It has been claimed that an archetypal Nigerian politician’s perfect pastime is preying on poor people in their milling millions. When he invites the manacled, malleable and mesmerised masses to the campaign grounds, all the politician offers is a table of yet more death-dressed promises that drug his listeners to buy into his boast that he could construct concrete castles in the air. Opiated, ossified and overpowered, the citizens believe him and cede their loyalty to the vote-hunting orator: their world is trapped in the man’s bottomless pocket.

*W.F. Kumuyi 

Now, it isn’t inconsiderate to put a good number of some of our religious leaders in the same cage as those politicians, given the cognate experience in history and in our clime. They pull crowds to draw the world back to the age of Johann Tetzel, the 15th Century German friar notorious for raising money for a church building in Rome. He sold to the gullible people so-termed relics and souvenirs of departed saints like Peter, John, James, Paul etc. and claimed that if you possessed those items you were excused from temporal punishment for your sins. Supported by the Church leaders of the day, Tetzel called his merchandise, Indulgences. There is a tradition, disputed though, that Tetzel also held that these Indulgences could secure peace for friends and relatives who had died in rebellion to Heaven.

Nigeria: Abubakar Malami's Incredible Faux Pas

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

The best value sincere friends and associates of the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Mr. Abubakar Malami, can inject in his career now would be to ensure that he schools himself to always speak sparingly and recognise the need to regularly deploy more time and effort to benefit from informed legal inputs before responding to very serious issues. The office he occupies is such an important and strategic one whose submissions on legal controversies Nigerians can confidently rely upon. It is always very disheartening whenever his interventions on very weighty national affairs are easily faulted by Nigerians, including even street traders and roadside mechanics. 

  *Malami with the British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Catriona Laing

When the 17 Southern governors met in Asaba on May 11, 2021, and   announced a ban on open grazing behind which gun-wielding Fulani herdsmen had for several years now hidden to commit various atrocities like brutal rapes of women and daughters, wanton destructions of crops, maiming or killing of farmers and the invasion and razing of communities, AGF Malami had rushed out to describe the governors’ resolution as “unconstitutional” and “dangerous.”

On Channels TV, Malami pronounced: “It is about constitutionality within the context of the freedoms expressed in our constitution…For example, it is as good as saying, perhaps, maybe, the northern governors coming together to say they prohibit spare parts trading in the north.”

The magisterial carriage with which this obviously very pedestrian and preposterous intervention was delivered must have deepened the astonishment of many Nigerians. How can a “learned gentleman” (least of all the AGF) compare violent herdsmen who appear to derive hideous animation from wantonly destroying farmlands and visiting their owners with diverse destructions and violations to motor spare parts traders who peacefully hire shops from their owners, pay taxes to government and undertake their business in ways that do not inflict any harm on anyone?