Bola Tinubu Should Resign!

 By Casmir Igbokwe

Three videos which trended on the social media last week brought home the current reality of life in Nigeria. The first one happens to be a group of young women struggling to scoop rice from the pot of a rice vendor in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital. The big pot of rice was still on fire, steaming hot. But the women were not bothered with fire or any other thing. All they wanted was to quench the fire of hunger ravaging their stomachs.

*Tinubu

In the second video, a group of people, mainly youths, were struggling to collect loaves of bread said to be N100 each. It was on February 14, 2024, being Valentine’s Day. As the youths were pushing and shoving one another, the organisers, who had a tough time controlling them, resorted to whipping them to be orderly. This particular incident reportedly happened on Lagos Island.

Nigeria, A Country With Too Many Sovereigns

 By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

Colonial rule in Nigeria was conducted through Indirect Rule. It was a system of “native administration” patented in Northern Nigeria, which became the model exported by the British across their colonies. For all practical purposes, this system of government gave to most Emirs and other rulers in Chiefly communities, “more power than they had in pre-colonial days.” 

*Allen Onyema 

The result was the establishment of “native states” at the top of which sat these local potentates, many of whom enjoyed powers of life and death over their kinsfolk. The end of colonial rule did not much change this as they reached working accommodation with the post-colonial elite for self-preservation. Powered by twin failures of both leadership and nation building, the result in Nigeria, where it all began, is one country with a multiplicity of sovereigns.

The on-going dispute between the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Aminu Ado Bayero, and Air Peace, a private airline in Nigeria, dramatises this. The claim on behalf of the Emir is that he flew Air Peace from Banjul, The Gambia to Nigeria, on February 24, landing in Lagos about 05:45 hours. He was at the head of a ten-person traveling party who had a connecting flight to catch to his home in Kano, north-west Nigeria scheduled for 06:15 hours the same morning, a mere 30 minutes after they landed. Five out of the ten members of the Emir’s traveling party were business class passengers.