A Half Century Of Banditry In Nigeria

 By Chidi Odinkalu

Since well before Nigeria’s return to elective governance in 1999, the country has been overtaken by a progressive escalation of what Hannah Arendt in her classic On Violence called “a massive intrusion of criminal violence into politics”. In contemporary Nigerianism, the word for this is “banditry”. 

“Bandits” is a conveniently capacious bogeyman for insecurity in Nigeria that precludes necessary questions as to the provenance of the descent into lawlessness. It captures diverse elements that may include terrorists, cultists, herdsmen, kidnappers, criminal gangs, and militants. 

ASUU: Manifest Assaults From Variants Of Anti-Intellectuals

 By Andrew A. Erakhrumen 

It may be discomfiting, but the truth, (our truth), must be told; that many Nigerians love quick fixes! This is a reason why they (we) have been going round in circles concerning their (our) challenges!

For instance, the tempo of stakeholders’ clamour, for Nigeria to find sustainable solutions to the underlying challenges causing industrial disharmony in the country’s public universities, subsided within two weeks after Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, suspended its strike on the October 14, 2022.

It was as if Nigerians, owing to the suspension, instantly forgot about the unresolved issues. Now, the people whose actions/inactions led to, and sustained, the painful eight-month strike in public universities are at it again – as usual! 

The Value Of Peter Obi

 By Abiodun Awolaja

As I begin these lines, I remember 1998 like yesterday. An old man on the street where I lived in Ondo town, exasperated by General Sani Abacha’s bloodthirsty rule, shrugged and said the following: “Well, at least he will leave the position in his old age.” Those were the days when it was almost an anathema to think of democracy. 

*Peter Obi 

Had God Almighty not taken Abacha out of the way just a few days after the man I have just referenced made his doleful comment, there would have been no democracy in 1999. The way Abacha and his colleagues carried on, it was as if they owned this world. They could kill and jail people at will. They looted the country dry and, in the words of the poet Tanure Ojaide, “threw questioners to hyenas.”