Weep Not for Tinubu, But Nigeria

 By Dele Momodu

Call it what you will, what happened at Chatham House London yesterday was a complete charade… The Bola Tinubu handlers fumbled, and bungled it big time… They showcased him like a packaged invalid. It would have been better to present him as a brilliant politician and administrator, warts and all, who’s capable of independent thoughts. No man is perfect. His gaffes would have been more pardonable and acceptable… He was expected to sell his own vision and mission…

Tinubu speaks at Chatham House, London

But what we saw yesterday was a theatre of the absurd. It brought back memories of our great President Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua and how he mysteriously disappeared from radar and some of his aides governed by proxy. I was one of those who led the Enough-is-Enough protest against the Yar’Adua cabal in Abuja in 2010. What was unacceptable then is even more unacceptable now with benefits of hindsight. Our country should be placed above friendship. 

Peter Obi Is Coming!

 By Chuks Ucheagu

Before the electioneering season, Peter Obi had been underestimated in the presidential race and called a loser. The establishment, made up of ruthless political class who do not want their boat of milking Nigeria and its future dry to be rocked by Peter the Rock, taunted him.

*Peter Obi and his wife, Margaret 

They jeered that he had no structure. The old and tired politicians averred he would come distant third. Then they and their minions mocked that he would only win on social media and end up a mere social media president.

The legacy politicians and their cronies were still living in denial when the gale of ObiDatti Movement started sweeping through the land, stirring a tsunami – ably led by the youths whose popular reality show, BBNaija, for the first time did not distract or deter. They are shocked to their bone marrows at the phenomenal accept- ability of Obi’s candidacy and the demand for his presidency by Nigerians across board. Be- cause no political movement had been this massive, spontaneous, organic and revolutionary in our recorded political experience.

2019: Why Nigerians Are Highly 'Atikulated'

By Dan Amor

Until recently when the erstwhile Vice President of Nigeria, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, (Turaki Adamawa), began to attract my attention in a very edifying and ennobling manner, I had almost concluded that President Muhammadu Buhari had no challenger within and outside the All Progressives Congress enclave. At the risk of alienating himself from his regional political constituency, Atiku, as he is popularly called, who is better appreciated as a child of events and circumstances, has espoused a large vision of a new Nigeria.

*Atiku Abubakar

"No section of the Nigerian State can claim correctly that its people are better served by the current structure of the federation within the context of the past 50 years of a failed unitary federalism", he boldly proclaimed. Atiku, one of the most respected and consistent national voices, especially in the current political dispensation, has also said that state actors and other politicians who insist that Nigeria cannot be renegotiated and who equate every demand for restructuring with secession may actually be setting the stage for unsavoury outcomes.

The Implications Of Buhari’s Absence

By Carl Umegboro

President Muhammadu Buhari officially embarked, at first instance, on a ten-day official leave and on its expiration, sought an extension on medical grounds. According to information from the Presidency, Buhari sought for an extension to enable him complete series of tests and medications as prescribed by his United Kingdom-based physicians. Since then, all manner of ugly insinuations and assumptions have trailed the development with a good number of people calling for Buhari to address the nation to rebut sundry allegations. Even in the United Kingdom, a group of Nigerians besieged the Nigerian High Commission seeking to know the health status of the President.

*Buhari 

Even after the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, tried to douse tension by assuring the nation of the president’s good health, it sounded as if water was poured on a stone. The Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN), who stands to personally benefit more if the President is permanently incapacitated as alleged, as provided for in Section 146 of 1999 Constitution, Federal Republic of Nigeria, confidently testified that Buhari was hale and hearty. His explanations were    regarded by some people as the recitation of Hollywood scripts.

Some claimed that as the President of the country, and by implication, a public officer, his whereabouts and health status must always be public knowledge. Incidentally, the President formally took some days from his statutory annual vacation as stipulated by the laws of the country. To start with, official leave implies a temporary disengagement from official duties and position. It, therefore, connotes that President Buhari is at the moment officially not the head of government by virtue of his letter to the National Assembly for temporary disengagement from duty as the President.