Thursday, July 3, 2025

Abacha’s Loot Laughs At Maryam’s Lies

 By Ray Ekpu

A former First Lady of Nigeria and wife of Nigeria’s most autocratic ruler, Mrs Maryam Abacha is trying to generate a controversy about her husband, General Sani Abacha. In a recent interview she said that her husband who ruled Nigeria from November 17, 1993 to June 8, 1998 never stole public funds but rather saved money for the country.

Late Abacha and wife, Maryam
She also claimed that this money he allegedly saved for the country mysteriously vanished after his death in 1998. She went further and “berated Nigerians for believing that her husband stole public funds and that it is because Nigerians are fools, that is why they listen to everything.”

2027: The Theoretical Case For Jonathan’s Return To Power

 By Olu Fasan

The title of this intervention is hedged with the word “theoretical”. That’s because the proposition that former President Goodluck Jonathan could return to power in 2027 is patently far-fetched and improbable: therefore, although there’s logic to the proposition, it’s purely theoretical.

*Jonathan

Indeed, Jonathan’s wife, Patience, put it unequivocally when she said recently that her husband would never go back to Aso Rock, and that she would campaign vigorously for the re-election of President Bola Tinubu. The bond between the Tinubus and the Jonathans is so strong, Mrs Jonathan implied, that it would be a betrayal if her husband ran against President Tinubu in 2027. 

Fear And Fragility: How Safe Are Nigerians?

 By Dakuku Peterside

When dawn cracks open the Nigerian sky these days, the first breath many people take is heavy with questions that shouldn’t linger in a country as rich in potential as Nigeria. It used to be enough to worry about food on the table or the children’s school fees, but now an even more primal fear sits beside those old burdens: “Am I safe enough to see tomorrow?”

Once upon a time, these worries were spoken in hushed tones only in the North-East, in places where Boko Haram and ISWAP turned towns into ghost settlements and farms into mass graves. But now, fear has found new postcodes, new voices, and new victims. From wedding convoys ambushed on the road in Plateau to explosions rocking markets in Kano, from gun battles in Kaduna’s streets to soldiers ambushed in Niger State, the message is clear: the fear of sudden violence is no longer distant. It has become the air we breathe.

Cuddling The Serpent Of Tehran!

 By Ochereome Nnanna

At the height of its power, Islam once controlled vast territories: from Morocco to China and from Russia down to sub-Saharan Africa. The rise of the European colonial empires, notably those of Britain and France, and later the United States of America’s global dominance, put the West and its value system at the centre of world power. It ended the 600-year-long Islamic Ottoman Empire and subjugated once powerful Muslim majority countries.

*Ayatollah Khomeini

The establishment of the Society of Muslim Brothers (Jama-at al Ikhwan al Muslimin), a Sunni Islamic movement in Egypt by Imam Hassan al Banna in 1928, set the tone for the political resurgence of Islam in the world of today. The Islamic Brotherhood and its offshoots seek to establish “caliphates” ruled with Shariah law, which is rooted in the Islamic scripture, the Quran. Most Islamists believe that the waging of jihads is something worth returning to in order to achieve the original aim of subjugating the entire world under Islam.