Tribute to Arákùnrin Rotimi Akeredolu, Aketi

 By Mogaji Gboyega Adejumo

It came as a rude shock to us in the Afẹnifẹre as the news of the passage of the Governor of Ondo State, Arákùnrin Olurotimi Akeredolu, filtered through the airwaves… Yet another illustrous, forthright and resolute democrat, passes on, in a land lacking leader that are deficient in audacity, bravery daring determination, endurance, fearlessness finesse, fortitude, gallantry, grit heroism, prowess spirit, spunk tenacity and valor.

Late Akeredolu

Aketi stood for what is right and just, a defender of the people and his people will forever appreciate his profound efforts that most often result in politically induced attacks on the people of Ondo State.

Who Dares Rechristen The University Of Ilorin?

 By Tunde Olusunle

Whenever I’m privileged to visit Ilorin the Kwara State capital, I include in my itinerary a visit to the University of Ilorin (UNILORIN), as is popularly abbreviated. My passion, maybe obsession with the institution is informed by a number of reasons. Principal among these is the fact that I had two academic excursions to the revered school, during which I obtained a bachelors honours and a master’s degree in English, respectively.

I was graciously offered a place on the doctorate programme by the university but had to weigh up the cost of shuttling between my home in Abuja and Ilorin. This was years before information technology truly broke down physical hedges and activated the options of real-time, virtual communication. What with Skype, Zoom, video call, and similar possibilities?

New African Magazine Unveils 100 Most Influential Africans Of 2023

 

New African magazine released today its annual listing of the 100 Most Influential Africans of 2023. The list celebrates the achievements and contributions of Africans from various fields and sectors, who have made a positive impact on the continent and the world. The list features a diverse and inspiring group of men and women, who have demonstrated excellence, innovation, leadership, resilience, and vision in their respective domains. They include politicians, entrepreneurs, industrialists, environmentalists, creatives, scientists, educators, sports personalities, and more.

Nigeria: Survival Of The Fittest And Profligacy Of Government

 By Emmanuel Onwubiko

The English philosopher and psychologist, Herbert Spencer, coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” (1820-1903). He is famous for his doctrine of social Darwinism, which asserts that the principles of evolution, including natural selection, apply to human societies, social classes, and individuals as well as to biological species developing over geologic time.

*Akpabio and Tinubu

In Spencer’s days, social Darwinism was invoked to justify laissez-faire economics and the minimal state, which were thought to best promote unfettered competition between individuals and the gradual improvement of society through the “survival of the fittest.”

Pray, Nigeria Needs Patriotic, God-Fearing Judges: Where Are They?

 By Olu Fasan

A few years ago, I wrote a piece titled “Lord, give Nigeria bold and incorruptible judges” (Vanguard, April 25, 2019). That was when state security agents invaded the homes of some judges and seized bags full of foreign currencies, and an incumbent Chief Justice of Nigeria was sacked, arrested and arraigned before the Code of Conduct Tribunal on corruption charges.

Nearly five years later, I’m repeating the prayer, and I urge fellow Nigerians to join me in saying it. For the rot in Nigeria’s judiciary is deepening and there’s fear of endemic perversion of justice. Even normally reticent senior judges and lawyers are no longer silent!

African ‘Democrats’ Strangulating Continent’s Democracy

 By Olusegun Samuel

I am using the word ‘democrats’ in a guided manner in this article because our so-called democrats got elected, though some of them have spent decades in power and are all through constitutional means.

*Buhari and Museveni

With the current situation in Nigeria, some parts of Africa and the rest of the world, a strong central government might not necessarily be the solution. Neither do we need a powerful, all-knowing ‘monarchical’ ruler to oversee the affairs of a nation. This is certainly the scenario we find ourselves in Nigeria- my native country- despite being in a so-called democratic government.

Nigeria: What Goes Around Comes Aground

 By Banji Ojewale

The universal principle is that what goes around must come around. It’s not so in Nigeria. With us, when what goes around goes around, it does more than coming around. As it makes its return trip, it comes aground, grounding us, leveling us, merging us with the miry mud. That’s been our history, extinct and extant. We create institutions and leaders from this back-and-forth process to form an endless cycle of vulnerable links in governance that remind us of the late poet, Christopher Okigbo: AN OLD STAR departs, leaves us here on the shore, Gazing heavenward for a new star approaching; The new star appears, foreshadows its going Before a going and coming that goes on forever… (Path of Thunder).

*Buhari and Tinubu 

 It is a villainous star, a kind of abiku that gives short-lived joy to the home where it surfaces at birth. Our present is nothing but a horrid replay of our unpleasant encounters with the past. We sowed the wind yesterday; but today we’re reaping what’s greater than the wind. What goes around comes aground.

Nigeria: Corruption And Politics Of ‘Winner Takes All’

 By Jerome-Mario Utomi

This piece primarily stemmed from a recent Nigeria-focused conversation with a Delta state born but Florida, United States of America (USA) based practicing Lawyer who studied in England, Finland, Sweden, and Norway among others. 

Aside from using the opportunity provided by the conversation to explain how today politics in Nigeria is not tailored to the development of the country, but to the individual players and their various interests, the Legal luminary highlighted the corruption challenge in the country with a sustainable strategy to arrest the monster. He deeply advanced approaches to sanitizing the nation’s political space in ways that will not only change the economic and public leadership narrative in the country but pave the way for well informed, self-contained and quietly influential Nigerians to participate in politics while bringing coordinated development in the country. 

Tinubu’s Foreign Policy: Driving Nigeria In A 4D Wagon

 By Owei Lakemfa

Ambassador  Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, the Honourable  Minister of Foreign Affairs, stepped out on Thursday December 21, 2023 to explain to  Nigerians the four-dimensional space built by the Tinubu administration for the country’s foreign policy. Tuggar, 56, a player in the oil and gas industry had in the last six years, been Nigeria’s Ambassador to  Germany.

*Tinubu

This opportunity  of  a wide audience including the diplomatic community, intellectuals, active and retired public servants   to examine  the new policy, was provided by the ever thoughtful and visionary Association of Retired Career Ambassadors of Nigeria, ARCAN. 

The ARCAN, led by Ambassador John Kayode Shinkaiye,   one of the country’s greats in African diplomacy, asked me to chair the occasion which had the succinct theme:   ‘The Foreign Policy Agenda under Tinubu Administration.’

CBN: Cash Scarcity Is Here To Stay For A While

 By Dele Sobowale

“Cash Scarcity: People are hoarding bank notes – CBN.” VANGUARD, December 14, 2023.

Governor Cardoso and his new team at the top of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, can be forgiven if the current cash scarcity being experienced has caught them by surprise.

They were not in office in March, when it was predicted on these pages that another round of cash scarcity was inevitable; after the one induced by the CBN then. Before going into the reasons why we are not free of this problem yet, permit me to make one observation; which will be helpful to the current CBN Management.  Statements such as “people are hoarding cash” are more emotional than technical or professional; and they seldom solve the problem.

Wike And Fubara: Tinubu’s Sham Agreement

 By Ugoji Egbujo

The agreement between a pimp and a prostitute ought not to be written. Because if the pimp and prostitute still have any trace of honour left in them, they wouldn’t want the transaction made legible for their grandchildren to read. However, when shame has fled and taboos have become doormats, a pimp can demand a written document.

*Tinubu and Wike 

And when they have a contractual dispute, a bishop might step in to ask the prostitute to sleep with more clients to satisfy the covenant. If reminded of the sinfulness of fornication and trade in flesh, the bishop might say that he did it in the interest of peace and to safeguard trade customs. Peace and custom are laudable virtues but when shallow peace is purchased at the cost of normalization of evil, society is imperiled. 

A Court For Kangaroos

 By Chidi Odinkalu

“Because judges are part of government, acting on our behalf, we are entitled to require them to abandon their priesthood and to present their activities for assessment by laymen.” David Pannick, KC, Judges, p. 17 (1987)

The Guardian’s obituary on Bernard Levin, the celebrated Times columnist who died in 2004 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease, described him as “a passionate and eclectic journalist with a legendary capacity for work, whose career made him a host of friends – and enemies.” Among these enemies, few were as determined as the legal profession.

David Pannick, KC, recalls that Mr. Levin’s settled view was that “the legal profession had an infinite capacity for deluding itself.” He had good reason. When Rayner Goddard retired as Lord Chief Justice in 1958, Bernard Levin’s evisceration of his judicial record inspired “a clandestine meeting at which the higher judiciary considered whether the uppity columnist might be done for criminal libel.” The idea was eventually dropped. 

The Burden Of Emerging Infectious Diseases

 By Ogodo Audu

Nigerians were shocked when the World Health Organisation (WHO) recently officially declared a fresh outbreak of corona virus disease in Benue State, revealing a total of 25 newly confirmed cases. It, as usual, stressed the importance of vaccination, emphasising that the virus remains prevalent. This has happened despite the millions that had been vaccinated in that state and confirmed immune in the heat of the COVID-19 virus infection years back.

It is the outbreaks of all sorts of infectious diseases in the country that brought the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) to Nigeria; it is the largest biomedical research facility administered by the U.S. Department of Defence (DOD). The WRAIR centre for military infectious disease research combines scientific expertise with product development to prevent a range of diseases of strategic importance to the U.S. military and the world.

Tribute To Comrade Joe Ajaero, NLC President, At 59

 By Denja Yaqub

When some leaders of The Guardian newspapers branch of the Nigeria Union of Journalists led by Gbolahan Gbadamosi, now a lawyer based in the United States of America were sacked by the management of the flagship of Nigeria’s newspaper industry sometime in the year 2000, they filed a complaint at the headquarters of Nigeria Labour Congress, then fully located in Yaba, Lagos under the leadership of Comrade Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole.

*Ajaero 

After attempts to resolve the issues through dialogue to ultimately reinstate the union leaders failed, NLC decided to massively picket the premises of the newspaper firm. Journalists from all the major print and electronic news media were effectively mobilized to cover the picket.

The Place Of Food In Nigerian Politics

 By Tony Afejuku

The essay you are about to read is culled from my Nigerian Tribune column In & Out of Monday, February 4, 2013. Its import is still as relevant now as it was then, although our current experience is readily and particularly worse than any calamitous calamity can be. Indeed, what we noticed then is nothing compared with what we have and observe today.

Our new Senate President, for instance, confirmed this last week with his gluttonous display of his extravagant gluttony on the occasion of his long-stomach birthday celebrations. The nicely nice brevity of the essay says so much in a few words about the longish-ness and long-ness of the monstrously monstrous politicians of protruding throats and bellies of bellies of bad belle bellies crushing the land and landscape from everywhere to everywhere.

Rivers Crises: A Challenge To Nation-Building

 By Obasi Igwe

Peace happily returned to Rivers, Ijaw nationalists having precipitately weighed-in for Fubara, turning party affairs ethnic, and leaving Wike with barely feeble support. Rivers State is a contrivance emphasising power over harmonious development, another expression of a flawed Nigerian structure awaiting statesmanly healing, hopefully under a modern democratic secular state of equal laws and equal applications built on civilised Common Law principles in an organically restructured true federalism. 

*Fubara and Wike 

Never force strange bedfellows into marriage merely to spite another. Rivers disproportionate volatility is not from multi-ethnicity, but due to a malign doctrine of Igbo landlocking undergirding it, whereof Igbo communities, nicknamed “Igboids,” are decoupled from their hinterland kith and kin; Bonny, Opobo, parceled to Ijaw trusteeship; leaving Andoni, Ogoni, askant. Negative contradictions of sharing booties of machination are behind Rivers problems, and until resolved the “fire next time” could be unimaginable.

‘Agbero’, Transport Unions And Public Order

 By Adesegun Ogundeji

Popularly referred to as  Agbero, operators of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and Road Transport Employers of Nigeria (RTEAN), are major actors in the transportation sector of Lagos State, and indeed other States across the country.

To some,  Agberos are into legitimate undertakings, while others simply see them as interlopers who compound the State’s transportation challenges. However, irrespective of contrary opinions, in the real sense of it,  Agbero,  by its original concept, is doing a legitimate business. Shocked? No doubt, I am sure a lot will be surprised to hear this, but don’t crucify me yet.

When Ndigbo Celebrated Their Own

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

As Nigeria’s political elites continue to fool around in Rivers State pretending to be preferring solution to self-inflicted political wound, it is refreshing to see groups celebrating excellence, merit and competence in a country where mediocrity and absolute lack of character have become the keys that unlock high public offices.

From Left: Aka Ikenga President, Agbalanze Chike Madueke, AFRINVEST CEO, Dr Ike Chioke, (Awardee) and Agunze Chib Ikokwu, former President of Aka Ikenga (pix: Daily Independent).

That was exactly what Aka Ikenga did on Sunday, December 17 when members held the 2023 end of the year get-together which has been the tradition since the think-tank organisation of Igbo intelligentsia and professionals who are committed to the vision of an egalitarian Nigerian society based on the rule of law, equity and fairness for all Nigerians, debuted in 1989.

Anarchies In Rivers, Ondo: No Individual Must Be Greater Than The State

 By Olu Fasan

I have strong affinities with the two states currently embroiled in political crises in Nigeria. One, Ondo, is my state of origin. The other, Rivers, is where I did my national youth service decades ago and for which I have undiminished affection. Sadly, while the citizens of both states are decent people, their political leaders are charlatans. They abuse public office and political power, acting with impunity as if they’re greater than the state and the people. 

*Wike and Akeredolu 

Yet, the rule of the game works differently. In a democracy, a few are elected to govern in the best interests of the people. But politicians in Rivers and Ondo states and, indeed, across Nigeria control power and use it in deleterious ways. They rule over the people, not for the people. Unfortunately, Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s president, is complicit in the elevation of selfish individual interests above the common good in both states.

Nigeria’s Wasteful And Insensitive Leaders

 By Dan Onwukwe

Very so often, news about Nigeria and its leaders, is profoundly concerning. Worrisome.  Whenever Tinubu presidency is over, I suggest that it should be taught as history lesson in schools – on how not to govern a country on the basis of propaganda and tapestry of lies. Governance is a serious, honest, human enterprise. It should not be the opposite.  Amid a blizzard of shocking revelations of bizarre profligacy in less than seven months in power, it shows some clear,  but disturbing issues about power and leadership in Nigeria. First, nothing that happens to a country that is not like their leaders. 

*Mrs Oluremi Tinubu, Akpabio, Mrs Akpabio and others during Akpabio 61st birthday celebrations 

Secondly,  power is like a bikini:  it reveals more than it can hide. In other words, what leaders do when they are trying to get power is not necessarily what they do after they have it. This is Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress revealed. It’s an unravelling story that will perhaps get worse with the passage of time. This is a government of contradiction. 

Nigeria: Time To Clean Up The Budget Process

 By Tunde Bamise

It is budget season again for Nigeria. In November, President Bola Tinubu assented to the 2023 Supplementary Budget, and, a few weeks later, presented the 2024 Appropriation Bill to the National Assembly. Naturally, this has been followed by a lot of debate and conversation about the details of the budget.

President Tinubu, in his presentation speech to the National Assembly, described it as “Our Budget of Renewed Hope; a budget which will go further than ever before in cementing macro-economic stability, reducing the deficit, increasing capital spending and allocation to reflect the eight priority areas of this Administration.”

Time Ticks For Nigerian Ruling Elite

 By Suyi Ayodele 

I take a bet. The judgement of God and of the people is nigh! Check your neighbourhood. For weeks, and in some cases, months, there is no electricity. But in your houses, you run your generator. Neighbours come around to charge their phones, rechargeable lamps and what have you in your compound. How do you tell them that you are not part of the oppressors? What about water? As early as 5 am, neighbours are already on the queue in front of your house to fetch water. They don't have the boldness to knock on your gate to wake you up. They know that they are at your mercy, and so, they wait until you wake up to turn on the tap for them. Many of these people grew up with functional water corporations and dams in their towns and villages.

 *Tinubu and Shettima

We are already in the festive period. How many Nigerians have what to eat during this season? How many can afford a bag of rice? How many will be able to buy clothes for their children and wards? How many are already calculating the school fees for the second term which begins by the first week of January 2024? When you consider these, you will realise that there is no time to postpone fixing Nigeria. The elite just have to fix Nigeria now or Nigerians will fix them, and permanently too. The masses are like the sheep. Those are the most gentle of all animals. But they have the most poisonous teeth ever! You can read me again. Sheep have teeth. Just pray they don't bite you with them. There is no anti-rabies vaccine that can cure that. 

Akpabio’s Uncommon Birthday Celebration

 By Ugoji Egbujo

Akpabio celebrated his birthday in a stadium. That must be a sign of his stature. The economic situation didn’t deter him. He gathered his people in tens of thousands to eat and drink. The people are poor but their leaders are rich on their behalf.

*Akpabio

A two-term governor, former minister and now senate president. It can’t get larger. Ordinarily, one government or the other would pick up the bill in recognition of his services to the nation. After all, such a political Iroko must have paid his dues. As Flavor, the musician, would say, “How much is money”? 

Solving National Leadership Problem In Nigeria

 By Chiedu Okoye

Nigeria, a multi-ethnic country, is a nation of nations with more than 250 ethnic and linguistic groups making up its geographical space and colonial contraption. It has not become an organic whole. The sad fact is that our past political leaders have failed to engender true peace and unity in Nigeria. The centrifugal forces of ethnicity and religion are tearing the nation apart.

*Buhari and Tinubu

Our past national leaders, both politicians and military rulers, could not harness our abundant natural resources such as limestone, tin-ore, bauxite, crude oil, and others, to leapfrog Nigeria to the acme of economic and technological advancement. Instead, the nation is trapped in the morass of national underdevelopment. Nigeria has been outpaced by less-endowed countries in the areas of economic and technological development. Think about Malaysia, Singapore, and Japan.

An Itinerant Jurist, An Unfinished Honeymoon And A Judicial Transaction

 By Chidi Odinkalu

Supreme Courts are places where lawyers and judges regularly encounter one another. On 17 November 2023, one of such encounters occurred, not in the regular halls of Nigeria’s Supreme Court in Abuja but in its Mosque.

There, Abdulaziz Waziri, a Justice of Appeal wedded Zaynab Bashir, a Judge of Nigeria’s National Industrial Court. The wedding reception followed thereafter at a well-appointed venue in up-market Maitama, in Abuja.

Justice Waziri has been nothing if not busy this season. For his duty station in this election petition appeal season, Justice Waziri was stationed in Jos, Plateau State, where the Justices of Appeal, in the state from which the President of the Court of Appeal hails, have been busy re-writing the results of the elections, taking seats from one party and generously handing them to another party on the bases of jurisprudence that can most charitably be described as extraordinarily specious. 

Tinubu, Appoint Diplomats, Not Politicians To Run Our Missions

 By Owei Lakemfa

The culture in Nigeria is that after Presidential Elections, politicians, hangers-on, propagandists, relatives and a rainbow of persons gather like ants over sugar. Primarily, the gathering is to partake of the honey which is how they see the emergent government.

*Tinubu 

In fact, for many, elections are the best investment they can make, and they need to quickly recoup the funds invested. The Tinubu administration has so far, exhibited the symptoms of that national disease.

Who Will Tell The Chief Justice?

By Chidi Odinkalu

Nigeria’s Supreme Court held a special session on 27 November 2023 to formally usher in a new legal year. It provides an occasion for a retrospective on the performance of Nigeria’s judiciary by its leaders in a season of unprecedented levels of public angst over the political weaponisation of judges and a set piece moment to compare notes on the dysfunctions that afflict the judicial system. The outcome was interesting to the point of anti-climactic.

*CJN Olukayode Ariwoola

On that occasion, the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Olukayode Ariwoola, also administered the oath on 57 new entrants into the coven of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN). One of the new SANs was born in 1981. Two years later, in 1983, his dad, a lawyer, began proceedings against Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) Ltd, a multinational company in the hydrocarbons sector, in Warri. At the time, Warri was part of Bendel State, which was created by the military a mere seven years earlier in 1976.

Addressing Youth Unemployment In Nigeria

 By Sirajaddeen Bello

Among Nigeria’s many socioeconomic challenges, one issue stands out as the biggest threat, casting a gloomy shadow over both the present and the future. That issue is youth unemployment. It is a subject that elicits a head shake, and a sense of impending doom. But beyond the sombre tone, let me unravel the implications of this predicament and infuse a touch of hope into this  serious issue.

Youth unemployment in Nigeria isn’t just a problem; it’s an iceberg of colossal proportions. Picture some hundreds of thousands, nay, millions of youths (educated, bright young minds) stuck in a seemingly endless and almost fruitless game of job hunting— a game where there are fewer opportunities and a mammoth crowd of players. 

Respecting Diversity For The Sake Of Unity

 By Abachi Ungbo

The social media is routinely awash with acerbic comments that eloquently speak to the antagonistic relationship that exists amongst Nigerians. They come with heavy religious and ethnic connotations. The situation now amounts to a declaration of war against the country’s unity. The warriors in the battlefield are preponderantly youth which clearly places the country’s future in a quandary. Sadly, moderating voices are few and far between. 

Nigeria is an intriguing weave of cultures, faiths and tribes, constituting a huge population that should ordinarily serve the union. Essentially, its rich diversity holds an abounding potential for collective progress and development. 

Nigeria: The Poor Shall Not Die!

 By Sunny Awhefeada

Delta State born gospel singer, Harold Ikuku, re­leased a popular album that was the rave of the moment in the tough and horri­ble years that the 1990s were. The song’s motif is “I shall not die”. Although a gospel song, it reso­nated with both Christians and non-Christians as a result of its affirmative message of survival in the face of brutal economic and psychological assault on the citizenry. 

It was this song that a man sang with so much gusto on hearing of the new pump price of petrol about three weeks ago, the second of such astronomical increase within two months of the present regime. When Presi­dent Bola Tinubu said, in his in­augural speech, that petroleum subsidy was gone, his handlers must have thought that it was a masterstroke in view of the fact that petrol subsidy had become an albatross for the Nigerian polity. 

Our Beloved Country Is Bleeding

 By Sunny Awhefeada

 I do not know why countries or na­tions are thought of in feminine forms (she/her). Perhaps, it is a strategy to endear us to the place of our nativity and create a bond, the kind that exists between a mother and her child. Growing up, we sang songs that endeared Nigeria to us. Our young and impressionable minds glowed with no­ble ideas to which our sonorous voices gave clarion utterances. Men and wom­en who lived generations before this era also thought of their place of birth in endearing terms and they went to war in defence of their homeland.

*President Tinubu and Senate President Akpabio

Empires and kingdoms rose and fell in battles to defend the homeland. Even Nigeria’s national anthem and pledge have mem­orable and endearing words to configure our allegiance and love for “our beloved country”.

As Gov Akeredolu Steps Aside

 By Dan Agbese

The centre did not quite fall out in Ondo State. Governor Rotimi Akeredolu has done the right thing even if reluctantly. He persuaded himself to end the needless crisis and take another medical leave and very reluctantly leave the state in the hands of the deputy governor, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, as acting governor.

*Akeredolu 

The State House of Assembly has formally confirmed him in that position. This was the eventuality the governor had risked his health to fight. I join the people of Ondo State in heaving a huge sigh of relief. 

Taking Rocky Path Of Struggle With Kokori

 By Owei Lakemfa

I was a young Labour Reporter when I had my first encounters with Frank Ovie Kokori in 1984. He was a 41-year-old trade unionist who had been more of an industrial relations personnel. He had attended the University of Ibadan and worked with an industrial relations company owned by socialite and former trade unionist, Alhaji Babs Animashaun.

*Kokori 

The latter had set Kokori on a life-long path of trade unionism when he assigned him to service the now defunct British Petroleum Workers Union. When the house unions were reorganised in 1977 into industrial unions, the union he serviced was scrapped and infused into the new National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, NUPENG.

COP28: Tinubu’s Hypocrisy On Climate Change

 By Olu Fasan

So, Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s new president, believes that climate change is a Nigerian problem after all. In fact, so much does he believe Nigeria has a climate-change problem that he led a delegation of 1,411 people to this year’s United Nations climate summit, COP28, which took place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from November 30 to December 12. Yet, just a few months ago, Tinubu was cynical and dismissive about climate-change mitigation in Nigeria.

*Tinubu with some members of the large Nigerian delegation to COP 28

In October last year, during the presidential election campaign, Tinubu spoke at the interactive session of the Arewa Joint Committee in Kaduna. Asked about climate change, he responded: “It’s a question of how you prevent a church rat from eating poisoned holy communion.” He then added: “We need to tell the West, if they don’t guarantee our finances, we are not going to comply with their climate change.”

Tinubu’s First Six Months: Redemption Way Or Road To Golgotha?

 By Kalu Okoronkwo

President Bola Tinubu’s assumption of office on May 29, 2023, marked a critical moment in Nigeria’s political landscape, evoking both expectations and scrutiny.  His landmark speech during his inauguration that brought about the much-touted oil subsidy removal was a turning point in the country’s economic policy.  This is because many perceived the issue of subsidy removal as a hard nut to crack hence previous administrations only paid lip service to it.

*Tinubu 

Six months in the life of a new administration is very much early day for a four- year tenure but the augury mirrors what lies ahead.

An unbiased and dispassionate assessment of Tinubu’s first six months in office can only return one verdict: it has bought unmitigated hardship and thrown more Nigerians into multidimensional poverty. Food inflation is at its highest ever that even a bulb of onion has become a gem stone to be pampered and cherished.

Tinubu Renewed Or Delayed Hope?

 By Dele Sobowale

“History does not repeat itself; man does” – Harvard Prof. Barbara Tuchman

My heart sank after reading the summary of the 2024 Budget and the promise by the Tinubu government to create a $1 trillion economy in ten years. Now, I am inclined to believe that Nigeria will never become the global economic power we yearn for as long as we continue to elect men seventy years and above as Presidents.

*Tinubu 

They all belong to the same generation making empty promises; thinking that they were inspiring their listeners.

All our Presidents, since 1999, including Jonathan, are far less informed about economics and social trends than many of their own citizens with good Master’s Degrees from reputable universities.