By Banji Ojewale
At the close of every month, an African non-denominational brand, the Global Crusade with Kumuyi, GCK, launches into the international scene, seeking
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| Pastor Kumuyi and his wife at one of the GCKs |
…As search to recognise and reward Nigeria’s extraordinary children begins
Dufil Prima Foods Ltd, makers of Indomie Instant Noodles, on Thursday May 9, officially announced the commencement of the 16th edition of its corporate social responsibility initiative, the Indomie Heroes Awards, the nationwide search exercise that seeks to identify, recognize, celebrate, and reward the positive and heroic efforts of by children aged 15 years and below.
By Ugo Onuoha
In light of the challenges facing the Igbo today in Nigeria, the last thing that the beleaguered people should have to contend with is a fractionalised socio- political umbrella body. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Ohanaeze Ndigbo has been grappling with for some years. And it seems the situation is deteriorating rather rapidly.
The Igbo who are the only large, in terms of population, group of people who are indigenous to Nigeria [a fuller exposition on this another day] have been facing existential threats. The threats to emasculate and possibly annihilate the Igbo have been on for the better part of a century. And evidence abounds.
By Kenneth Okonkwo
On 1st March, 2023, Prof Yakubu Mahmood, Chairman Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) at about 4:30am, while most Nigerians were asleep, proclaimed Bola Tinubu as winner of the presidential election held on the 25th of February, 2023, in apparent disregard of the laws and rules of collation of results which he made for himself and for INEC.
He even boasted that there will be a big television screen revealing the electronically transmitted election results for the whole world to see to confirm and corroborate the manually collated presidential election results which he will be announcing. He failed woefully and deceitfully announced presidential election results without following due process he made for himself, and blamed technical glitch for failing to obey the laws. Till date nobody has been held responsible for the glitch that purportedly occurred that day. The people in charge of the systems then have been said to have been handsomely rewarded with promotion.
By Casmir Igbokwe
Last week, when I wrote that this government lacks a human face, I never knew that more harsh policies were in the offing. If not that President Bola Tinubu is a Muslim, I would have thought that his other name is Zaccheus. The biblical short man called Zaccheus was a tax collector, deeply hated by the people. Although the first name of the executive chairman of our Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) is Zaccheus, he is innocent of the recent taxes the Federal Government imposed on Nigerians.
The most recent one is called cybersecurity levy. According to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), all money deposit banks, mobile money operators and payment service providers will soon begin to deduct 0.5 per cent on electronic transactions in line with Section 44 (2)(a) of the Cybercrimes (Amendment) Act, 2024. The levy is to be remitted to the National Cybersecurity Fund (NCF) administered by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA).
By Ugo Onuoha
Yes, he is. A bonafide Igbo for that matter. After all, he was a two term governor of Ebonyi, one of the five states in the south east of the country. And south east is the core of the Igbo nation. It really does not matter that some elements in Ebonyi state do not really see themselves as Igbo.
There are many dialects of the Igbo language. Sure. But there is something common in the dialects- almost all Igbo people understand and comprehend themselves no matter the dialect they speak. However, there is a particular part of Ebonyi state who, when they speak their dialect, the typical Igbo person from outside their community will never make out any meaning from their words. This assertion is not designed to exclude or make any part of the south east less Igbo.
By Casmir Igbokwe
Former Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose’s brother trended on the social media recently. The outrageous amount of money he pays as electricity tariff every week was the crux of the matter. Some Nigerians apparently thought he was joking in the video where he claimed his weekly electricity bill was N100,000. And this is for three rooms. He said he used to spend this N100,000 in one month.
Fayose is not alone. All electricity consumers on Band A category are feeling the same pinch. Simply put, what they used to spend on electricity in one month is now spent in one week. What happened was that the Federal Government increased electricity tariff for these Band A customers on April 3, 2024. From N68 per kilowatt-hour, the tariff went up to N225 per kWh, an increase of over 200 per cent. These B and A customers reportedly have electricity at least 20 hours in a day. Customers on Band B, C, D and E do not have to worry about the increase in tariff for now as they are not affected in this pilot phase. The plan is to co-opt them into the tariff-hike prison within a period of three years.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu,
Nigeria’s president since May 29, 2023 is a man of many parts, talented in
multiple areas of life. As someone who is able to do many different things
almost effortlessly, Nigerians perceive him as a superman – the “ideal superior
man of the future,” as described by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, the 19th
century German philosopher in Thus Spake Zarathustra, “who could rise above
conventional Christian morality to create and impose his own values.”
Notwithstanding, it has become glaring in the 11 months of his presidency that what is still unknown about him far outstrips what people thought they knew. For instance, Nigerians didn’t reckon with his ability to do a disappearing act on them. Again, how could anyone have imagined that Tinubu had the ability to cast a spell on an otherwise vibrant people and turn them into zombies so much so that even in the face of egregious conducts, the people would rather relapse into portentous silence?
By Adekunle Adekoya
Penultimate Wednesday, the Lagos State Commissioner for Environment and Water Resources, Tokunbo Wahab, on Wednesday, said the state government he works for has discovered dwellings under the Dolphin Estate Bridge, Ikoyi, where tenants pay N250,000 annual rent.
According to the commissioner, the under-bridge
dwellings, which he called apartments in his post on the matter on his X
(former Twitter) handle, had 86 partitioned rooms, sized “10×10 and 12×10”.
He added that the enforcement team of Lagos State’s Ministry of Environment and Water Resources had successfully removed all structures, including a container utilised for various illegal activities, from beneath the Dolphin Estate Bridge.
By Chidi Odinkalu
“Fools at the top would cause
damage to any system not to talk of the fragile institutions of a fledgling
democracy.”—Charles Archibong, A Stranger in Their Midst: A
Memoir, 97 (2021)
In the last week of April, 2024, Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Olukayode Ariwoola, co-convened and chaired a “National Summit on Justice” in Abuja, Nigeria’s federal capital. Addressing the participants “with a profound sense of responsibility”, the CJN invited them “on a journey of comprehensive reform to ensure that justice is not only dispensed but also perceived to be dispensed fairly and impartially.” More specifically, he asked them to identify “gaps and inconsistencies that hinder the efficient administration of justice.”
No issue is as afflicted with such gaps in knowledge and inconsistencies of practice and yet so dispositive of outcomes in justice administration as judicial appointments in Nigeria. Yet, it is the one area about which little is public and debate is discouraged.
By Ike Abonyi
“It’s in the character of a very few men to honour without envy a friend who prospered.” – Aeschylus
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Envy and jealousy drive political rhetoric in Nigeria, particularly among handicapped Igbo politicians. David Umahi, the former Ebonyi State Governor and current Minister of Works, has been mistaking envy towards Peter Obi, the Labour Party's presidential candidate for normal political behaviour. The minister's recent outburst against Ndigbo is a desperate and disingenuous effort to impress his political allies and gain favour from the Aso Rock Villa.
By Olu Fasan
Recently, the International Monetary Fund, IMF, lamented Nigeria’ low tax revenues. Two weeks ago, when launching the IMF’s Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa, the Fund’s Director for Africa, Abebe Selassie, said: “For a country like Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, with all those development spending needs, we think it is problematic that the tax revenue to GDP is only 8-9 per cent when it should be a lot higher.”
A few years ago, in its 2019 Article IV Consultation with Nigeria, the IMF made the same point. It said Nigeria suffered from “low tax mobilisation”, adding: “The revenue base is simply too low to address the current challenges”. Compared with the sub-Saharan African average of 18.6 per cent, Nigeria’s 8-9 per cent is minuscule and truly shocking. Like the IMF, successive Nigerian governments have fretted about it.
By Adekunle Adekoya
As a people, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves when it comes to electricity. Since 1972 when the Electricity Corporation of Nigeria, ECN, was merged with the Niger Dams Authority to create the National Electric Power Authority, NEPA, millions of Nigerians have been born and have died with their dreams of living in a country with reliable power supply unrealised.
