Nigeria: A Dying State In The Of An Ineffectual Government

By Obi Ebuka Onochie

“People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The above line from Fyodor is truer of Nigerian situation today which leaves one to wonder if we will ever come out of this pit. The killings are no longer fluid but continuously stable that many of them go unreported.

Kidnapping is now a mass business and every detail about these kidnappings are questionable raising debate if they were real or staged.

We are so deeply torn apart that evil is triumphing not only within our boarders but the psyche, mind, heart, ability and competence of those entrusted to govern presently. 

Nigeria: Blood On President Buhari’s Hands

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Buoyed by the high approval rating he received from the misguided Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, President Muhammadu Buhari has readied himself for more foreign validation ahead of the 2019 election.

But the next rendezvous for validation does not remain in the United Kingdom. 

*President Buhari 

It is in the White House of President Donald Trump in the United States. Beyond the communiqué on the pledge of bilateral fidelity, Trump would have rendered inestimable service to the world and particularly Nigeria when he takes note of the tragedies in the country that have heralded this meeting. Trump must note that he cannot engage in meaningless banters with Buhari while the latter’s country is choking under the carapace of Fulani herdsmen’s terrorism. 

Thus, the meeting should provide Trump an opportunity to bring this wayward African leader to the path of probity. Of course, before Trump, Buhari might attempt to disparage Nigerian citizens as criminals and lazy. He would justify the incarceration of Nigerian citizens in U.S. prisons and laud Trump’s immigration laws that are meant to send foreigners home. He would massage Trump’s ego for agreeing to sell 20 Tucano warplanes to Nigeria whereas his predecessor Barack Obama refused to do that. Buhari might regale Trump with tales of the gains of his anti-corruption campaign. But all this should not make Trump to miss the opportunity to tell Buhari that blood is on his hands. After all, Buhari would never listen to the counsel of his Nigerian people. But he would listen to Trump because he considers him as the chief representative of a version of life that is beyond the reach of Africans. Or how do we explain the excitement that Trump is magnanimous enough to open the doors of the White House to Buhari? 

President Buhari’s Corruption War

By Ike Abonyi

“If you love your country, you must be willing to defend it from fraud, bigotry, and recklessness even from a President”

– DaShanne Stokes

*President Buhari 

At a conversation over a curtail in May 2016 by three prominent British citizens, the then Prime Minister David Cameron, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Speaker of the British Parliament, John Bercow at the Buckingham Palace to mark the 90th birthday of Queen Elizabeth, Nigeria was the topic and the issue was a scheduled corruption summit in United Kingdom.

The PM said: “We have some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain… Nigeria and Afghanistan, possibly the two most corrupt countries in the World.”

But the Archbishop intervened to say: “But this particular President in Nigeria is not corrupt… he is trying very hard.”

The speaker typical of a watchdog to government simply said: “They are coming at their own expense, one assumes?”

If that set up is to repeat itself today, the PM would be standing on the same position and would be right, but the Archbishop certainly would not provide same defence he did 17 months ago given the myriads of corruption scandals around the President and his henchmen.