UK General Election: British Democracy Shames Nigerian Ineptocracy

 By Olu Fasan

Trust Nigerians, some will scoff at any comparison between Britain’s democracy and what Nigeria calls democracy. But if democracy is, as Abraham Lincoln famously defined it, “government of the people, by the people, for the people”, then Nigeria must be held to universal standards.

*UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer

The critical electoral link between the government and the governed must not be severed, and democracy must not become ineptocracy, a system run by inept people. In any representative democracy, the irreducible core is the will of the people freely expressed in credible elections. That’s why last week’s UK general election offers some lessons.

Ministry Of Humanitarian Resources Metaphor For Buhari/APC

 By Dele Sobowale

“All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies” – Dr John Arbuthnot, 1667-1735.

*Buhari and Sadiya Umar-Farouk, former minister for Humanitarian Affairs
The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, is close to the graveyard; mostly because Nigerians got sick and tired of the unfulfilled promises and outright lies the leaders of the party peddled for sixteen years. In a saner society, former President Obasanjo should not find five people ready to listen to his self-righteous utterances after leaving N8 trillion expenditure unexplained and $13-16 trillion taken for 10, 000MW power generation without result.

Lessons From Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan’s Victory

 By Ayo Oyoze Baje

“Success is not measured by the position you reach, but by the obstacles you overcome” – John Harold Johnson( late publisher of Ebony Magazine)

*Natasha 
She is a rare breed; an iconic combination of brilliance, beauty, and boldness. But more than these, she has become a jinx-breaker of some sort, making history by becoming the first Ihima-born politician to climb up to the pedestal of senator-ship, in Nigeria’s chequered history of democracy.

Elections: Is Anyone Still Listening To Mahmoud Yakubu?

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Obviously, Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Professor Mahmoud Yakabu, must be in love with the sound of his own voice. That is why he keeps blabbing even when no one is listening. 

*Yakubu 

He is, once again, playing the game he knows how best – lying to himself and taking Nigerians for a ride. In doing that, he probably thinks he is fooling the people. 

But he never reckons with the admonition of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, who once said: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” 

PEPT Verdict: Judiciary As Undertakers Of Nigeria’s Democracy

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

On Wednesday, September 6, the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal, PEPT, delivered judgement in the petitions filed by Atiku Abubakar and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Peter Obi and the Labour Party, and the Allied Peoples Movement, APM, challenging the declaration of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, APC, winner of the February 25 presidential poll.

The five judges that delivered the PEPT judgment 

It is instructive that the ruling came exactly on the day the respondent, Bola Tinubu, marked his 100th day in office as President. It is also worth noting that as the judgement was being delivered in Abuja, Tinubu who ordinarily should be in the eye of the storm, was in far-away New Delhi, India, where he is representing Nigeria on an observer status at the summit of the group of 20 most industrialised nations, G20, the premier forum for international economic cooperation, on the invitation of the incumbent chairman, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India.

My Democracy Is Not Your Democracy!

 By Owei Lakemfa

We were gathered. Some intellectuals, social activists, journalists, serving and retired diplomats. The primary issue was democracy. Is it universal and is there just a single, or multiple roads to democracy? Is the British democracy which calls itself the Mother of Parliaments, superior to the American version; is the latter better than the Australian or the Chinese? Is Russian democracy superior to the Ukrainian?

It was Thursday, April 27, 2023 and the venue was the Cuban Embassy on Diplomatic Drive, Abuja. The out-going Cuban Ambassador Clara Pulido Escandell was presenting the report of the  April 19, 2023 general elections in her country and explaining Cuban democracy within the context of  democracy in the modern world.

Is Nigeria A True Democracy? Far From It!

 By Olu Fasan

President Muhammadu Buhari recently said this year’s general elections showed that “Nigeria’s democracy has truly matured.” But speaking on Arise TV, Barry Andrews, Chief Observer of the European Union Election Observation Mission to Nigeria, said: “It’s difficult to point to progress being made in terms of the democratic story of Nigeria.” Basically, he’s saying Nigeria’s “democracy” is too rudimentary to be called a true democracy. Or, as the Financial Times said, “Nigeria remains a democracy, but only just.” Put simply, Nigeria is a Democracy in Name Only, DINO!

But why does Buhari think differently? Well, a former dictator turned “democrat”, he sees democracy through the narrow prism of “voting” in “elections”, with little interest in what happens before, during and after the process. For him, provided there’s “voting”, it doesn’t matter if elections are not free, fair, transparent, and credible; if the will of the people is obstructed through vote-buying and voter-intimidation; and if people’s votes actually don’t count due to ballot-snatching and manipulation of results. 

President, Governors Disown The Poor

 By Dele Sobowale

“Fish rots from the head.”

If you want to know how good or bad a country is, just take a look at the top politicians. It is now becoming an axiom of political science, that it is almost impossible to have a great country with absolutely atrocious leaders in charge.

*Buhari and some governors

It all starts from the President or Prime Minister. Was there an African or black person anywhere who was not proud when Nelson Mandela was President of South Africa? Who else among the mob that was elected and ruled in Africa who has given us that sense of pride in being African and black?

Mandela achieved everlasting fame, universal acclaim and respect in just five years. See what we have got in Nigeria after seven and a half years of Buhari. Surely nobody would be dishonest enough as to call him a great leader – given the legacies he and the First Lady, FL, are likely to leave behind.

Peter Obi: Nigeria’s Beacon Of Hope

 By Promise Adiele

Overwhelming excitement. Sheer euphoria mixed with anger. Ecstatic frenzy sustained by passionate commitment. That is the story of Nigeria’s current revolution predicated on the ideology of omniscient humanitarianism. Peter Obi is the proponent of that ideology and millions of Obidients are the protagonists. Make no mistakes about it, there is a battle for the soul of Nigeria. While millions of youths are determined to save their country from all the spiralling contradictions of suffering and hardship, the human principalities responsible for these conditions are also fighting back. Thus the war rages. 

*Peter Obi 

It is class struggle, the cornerstone of Marxist sensibilities. Within four months, the Peter Obi story has become folklore, upsetting the subsisting narrative in Nigeria’s political terrain. The historical peregrination of revolution across the world follows a familiar pattern with what is happening in Nigeria now. However, the Nigerian revolution transcends nebulous categories such as ethnicity and religion. Indeed, it is a new beginning in Nigeria. 

2023: Nigeria Can’t Afford Another Lame Duck Commander-in-Chief!

 By Gbadebo Adeyeye

One thing is certain: we cannot learn anything new from a dope; and those politicians who believe that democracy is nothing but exploitation, are no better. That is why Abraham Lincoln warned, decades ago, that humanity should “beware of rashness; but with energy and sleepless vigilance, go forward and give us victory.”

*Prof Yakubu, INEC Chair

To many of us, we can say categorically that there is no strong assurance of achieving any political victory in our country unless Nigerians join hands together in 2023 to choose someone who is highly qualified for the office in which wisdom, intelligence, good character, and guts are the requirements.

The reason is simple. In times like this, nothing is more important to hardworking Nigerians than a government that can defend its defenders and protect its protectors! It is true that a leader may not be able to solve all the problems of the future but he must be able to solve the problems of his generation. Failure to do that is a failure in the journey of life.

Nigeria: Kuje Prison Down, Is Aso Rock Next?

 By Dele Sobowale

“I am disappointed with the intelligence system. How can terrorists organise, have weapons, attack a security installation and get away with it? I am expecting a comprehensive report on this shocking incident.” 

(President Buhari, at Kuje Prison, Abuja, July 5, 2022). 

Man proposes; God disposes. I planned a different article for today, titled, “Emilokan Brought Us Buhari And Anarchy” – a comprehensive catalogue of all terrorist activities for the month of June. But my colleague, Nnamdi Ojiego, had done a better job by publishing a more comprehensive report from May 1, 2022, in Sunday Vanguard of July 10, 2022, on page 24.

I challenge anyone who is not a candidate for a mental hospital to read Ojiego’s article without feeling that anarchy is definitely here. There was no single day in June 2022 when killings, kidnapping and mob violence by hoodlums and Fulani herdsmen were not reported. Katsina, Buhari’s state, was among the worst four. If you still have any doubt that the All Progressives Congress, APC, and President Buhari have brought us into pure anarchy, then the two attacks occurring on the same day should get your brain working – if you have any. 

Nigeria: Covid-19 And The Leadership Question

By DAN AMOR

For those of us who still believe in the geographical expression called Nigeria, at no other time that our country needs more fervent prayers than now. But the current situation also demands eternal vigilance and critical immediacy. Yet, the Coronavirus pandemic ravaging the human race since November 2019, more than anything else, poses a grave challenge to leaders across the world. While the COVID 19 pandemic has really revealed leaders with the sterner stuff who have shown the capacity to lead at very auspicious moments in the affairs of man, it has also exposed the soft underbelly of others who lack the capacity to walk their talk.

*Buhari 

It is now so apparent that Nigeria, my country, is a nation of experts without roots. We are always creating tacticians who are blind to strategy and strategists who cannot even take a step. And when the culture has finished its work, the weak institutions handcuff the infirmity. But what is at the centre of the panic which is our national culture since we are not yet free to choose our leaders?

The Death Of Truth In Nigeria

By Passy Amaraegbu

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election 

– Otto von Bismarck. 

The first documented census in Nigeria was carried out by Britain in 1866. Following this, others in 1971, 1896, 1901, 1911, 1921 and 1952/53.

However the first census after independence was in 1963. Thereafter, the degree of reliability of the figures has been on a spiral descent and decline. The official Nigeria position is that Lagos State with a population of 9,013, 534 is second to Kano with a first position of 9,401, 288 (Nigerian Finder). However, the Lagos State government puts the census of the State at 22 million while the United Nations puts it at 14 million.

Gettysburg Address: Abraham Lincoln Rebukes Us From The Grave

By Banji Ojewale

Wednesday November 19, 2014 marked the 151^st  anniversary of the delivery of the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln, the President of the US at the time of the American Civil War in the 19^th Century. Lincoln delivered the speech to commemorate the gruesome Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania and to dedicate a national cemetery for slain soldiers.

*Abraham Lincoln: 16th President of 

the United States  (pix:planetfigure) 

It was a brief oration that lasted only a few minutes. The Lincoln presentation 272 words – appeared to pale next to that of a well known national orator Professor Edward Everett whose speech, running into nearly two hours, came ahead of the president’s.

The crowd gave Lincoln what an observer described as a “perfunctory applause”. It was a euphemism for unstated rejection of the speech! But the professional Everett instantly noticed the landing of a new benchmark for oratorical discipline and ingenuity. “My speech will soon be forgotten,”  he told Lincoln. “Yours will never be. How gladly would I exchange my hundred pages for your twenty lines”.