You Cannot Swear-In A President Twice

 By Obi Nwakanma

“If you do not know where to put your hand, rest it on the knee” – Igbo proverb.

The inauguration of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria into office is a pretty serious constitutional event. It transfers power definitively to an individual who is then expected to embody the moral, philosophical, visionary, and constitutional ideals of the nation, and direct the executive function of state. The Constitution establishes the power of Nigeria in three institutions of state: the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, and the President. The National Assembly makes the laws.

The Supreme Court interprets those laws, including the permanent laws established by the Constitution. The President, as the Head of the executive branch of the three arms, executes the laws. These three powers together make up the Federal Government. They operate separately, and each is granted the power to oversee the other in order to create a balance of power, and prevent the misuse of authority. For instance, the National Assembly, which is actually the most powerful institution of state in a democratic republic, controls the Treasury of Nigeria, by law. Not the President.

Igbo And The Battle For Lagos

 By Bisi Olawunmi

With governorship elections slated for Saturday, 18 March, 2023 there is tension in many states where the elections have become too close to call. Lagos State is the economic jewel of the nation and one where Saturday’s election will be an epic battle, given the emergent Youth Revolt which catapulted Labour Party’s (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi, to a landmark victory over Lagos Landlord, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

Obi garnered 582,454 votes to Tinubu’s 572,606 votes with perennial presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, of the People’s Democratic Party trailing by a paltry 75,750. For the PDP candidate, it was literally a wipe -out. Atiku, the Turaki of Adamawa simply ‘ tukasile ‘ (fell apart) in his Lagos outing. The Obidients even claim that they had a wallop of votes close to one million.

Obi And Soldiers Of Conscience

 By Jideofor Chukwuemeka

After several years of trials with the democratic order without significant progress in all indices of development, Nigeria is yet at another trajectory. Another general election is around the corner. And the kind of leadership choices the electorate makes will determine whether the country will mark a sharp departure from its sordid past or continue with a dismal and decadent order that is sliding to the brink.

*Peter Obi mobbed by admirers in Delta State 

 

Though there appears a wide gamut of consensus that the coming elections yet provide a defining opportunity for this country to get its acts right, those who hitherto profited from the old order seem not keen in having that be.

Before the emergence of the presidential candidates of the political parties, issues of competence in grappling with the worsening economic situation and power rotation had dominated political discourse.

How Many Presidents Will Atiku Make Of Ndigbo?

 By Amanze Obi

Atiku Abubakar’s announcement in Asaba, Delta State, last week that their son, Ifeanyi Okowa, would succeed him, should he become the President of Nigeria in 2023, says a lot about the delicate and intricate balancing that Atiku is dealing with. The man is working hard to penetrate the Igbo nation from either the east or the west.

*Atiku and Soludo 

It all began in Enugu some weeks earlier when Atiku told a gathering of southeasterners that he would ensure that they take their turn at the presidency, if they support him to become President in 2023. With these pronouncements, Atiku surely knows what the Igbo want. They are hungry for the presidency and Atiku is dangling the carrot at them at every turn. He wants them to see him as the vehicle that will take them to Damascus.

Soludo’s Cat And Mouse Game With Peter Obi

 By Emmanuel Aziken

Governor Chukwuma Soludo stirred not a little controversy when he received Atiku Abubakar on Thursday and dubbed him one of two serious contenders in the presidential contest.

*Obi and Soludo 

Soludo’s decision to narrow down the presidential contest to two persons left many wandering as to who besides his assumed favourite, that is Atiku, was the other serious contender.

Given his blistering last epistle many were quick to assume that the Anambra governor had again rekindled his cantankerous dispute with supporters of the penultimate governor of the state, Peter Obi who is the Labour Party’s presidential candidate.

Soludo’s Bile Against Obi Unwarranted

 By Charles Okoh

Whoever advised Governor Chukwuma Soludo on the path he has taken in his unwarranted attack on the former governor of the state and presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi, has obviously and totally misled him. If anything, his reaction was so infantile and lacking tact.

*Obi and Soludo 

What would Soludo say was the reason he went overboard and spewed all those bile when he is not contesting the position of the president? Between Obi and APGA’s Prof. Peter Umeadi, who realistically has a better chance?

After all said and done, Soludo ended up projecting the candidacy of both Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), than he has done for his party’s candidate (Umeadi).

Afenifere: All’s Well That Ends Well

 By Sola Ebiseni 

It takes discerning spirit to see the unequalled blessings to the Afenifere from what ordinary folks see as crisis from the recent gathering in Akure. To start  with, it is apposite to say and as revealed in his interview with the Sunday Punch of November 6, that the meeting was conveyed by Dare Babarinsa and Otunba Kole Omololu through the ‘Conscience of the Yoruba Nation’,  a WhatsApp Group administered by the latter who incidentally is the National Organising Secretary of Afenifere.

Chief Ebiseni 

The invitation which was on the letterhead of the group and now in circulation on social media, was said to be a meeting with the leadership of the Yoruba nation “to discuss the historic 2023 General election and take a definite and wise decision” and also with “one of the leading candidates,  Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu”, within a specified two hours duration of 11 am to 1.pm. 

The Blood Of Deborah Cries For Justice!

 By Rotimi Fasan

In 1989 the Iranian spiritual and revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeni, issued a fatwa that was to be executed by any Muslim anywhere in the world on the Indian-born British novelist, Salman Rushdie, following the publication of his book, The Satanic Verses, which some Muslims considered blasphemous.

*Deborah Yakubu Samuel 

Not only did the British government and other Western powers at the time rise up in defence of Rushdie’s right of free expression, these countries were very unambiguous about the extent they were prepared to go to defend the right of just one man who was not even a Christian to say nothing of being White to hold personal views of religion and religious figures no matter how obnoxious.

The Many Contradictions Of Muhammadu Buhari

By Reno Omokri

President Muhammadu Buhari has blamed everybody but himself for his problems and now that he has gotten to the end of his tenure, he has run out of human beings to blame, so he has now been reduced to blaming inanimate objects.

*Buhari 

I mean, on Christmas Day he told the visiting Federal Capital Territory Christian community that his anti-corruption war had not really taken off because the Nigerian system was slow. Well, he does have a point, because if the Nigerian system had been working, Muhammadu Buhari would have faced a firing squad for overthrowing the democratically elected civilian administration of President Shehu Shagari on New Year’s eve of 1983.

Atiku-Obi ticket: The Devil In The Detail

By Banji Ojewale

“There is a great deal of difference between the eager man who wants to read a book, and the tired man who wants to read.”

—G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) English writer

Abubakar Atiku and Peter Obi, the flag bearers of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Nigeria’s 2019 presidential poll, come from two different backgrounds. Atiku is a swashbuckling jolly good fellow. Peter Obi isn’t. Atiku is a rumbustious politician. Obi isn’t. Atiku is a gregarious personality on account of his wealth. Obi isn’t. Atiku is given to raucous peals of laughter that reflect his carriage. Obi isn’t. Atiku is a political figure who has operated at the national level. Obi isn’t. Finally, septuagenarian Atiku’s temperament is predictable. 57-year-old Obi’s isn’t.

*Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar 

Two opposites brought together by the PDP to make Nigeria work again, following a perception that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has underperformed and sunk the country into an abyss of misery, misrule and misfortune. Both Atiku and Obi post ‘formidable’ records in their days in office; the former as a vice-president for eight years after grabbing a governorship seat in Adamawa which he didn’t consummate, and the latter as a governor in Anambra for eight years.

Waiting For Atiku’s Women

By Banji Ojewale

There is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women

—Kofi Annan (1938-2018), former UN Secretary-General.

I am among millions of Nigerians who can’t wait for the day God will bless our dear country with a visionary and radical female president, along with a great host of the fairer sex of kindred spirit governing the states and heading the MDAs. The tragedy of an effete economy, social stagnation and political paralysis that we have lived with over the years is the consequence of the neglect of this formidable section of society by our leaders. 

*Atiku  Abubakar 

Developing society and its constituents boils down to making use of all the functional human capital at your disposal. The moment you succumb to so-called imperatives of culture, false religion or superstition, and you drop the women, youth and the working class from your strides, you begin to enter a reverse march. That’s been Nigeria’s misogynist history, always drawing us into the bottomless depths of backwardness.