By Casmir Igbokwe
From today, we will most
likely begin to behold Nigeria’s national flag and colours, green-white-green,
in many public places. This is in commemoration of Nigeria’s independence anniversary.
On Tuesday, many of us will clink glasses and chant, ‘Happy Independence,
Nigeria’. Our President will probably make a national broadcast to mark the
day. Every October 1, we celebrate our independence from British colonial rule.
But the question is, are we truly independent?
By Casmir Igbokwe
Soon after President Bola Tinubu made a futile attempt to raise the hope of Nigerians in his Independence Day broadcast on October 1, 2024, he jetted out to London on a ‘two-week vacation’. A statement by his Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, indicated that it’s a working vacation and a retreat to reflect on his administration’s economic reforms. Really!
Nigerians are used to governance by deceit. Not a few citizens doubted this story about vacationing to reflect on economic reforms. They wondered why the President should travel to London to do that simple task. Are the air conditioners in Aso Villa not cooling his brain well enough? Well, we have to believe because we have no choice. If you protest, security agents could arrest you and slam terrorism charges against you.
By Casmir Igbokwe
Last week, when I wrote that this government lacks a human face, I never knew that more harsh policies were in the offing. If not that President Bola Tinubu is a Muslim, I would have thought that his other name is Zaccheus. The biblical short man called Zaccheus was a tax collector, deeply hated by the people. Although the first name of the executive chairman of our Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) is Zaccheus, he is innocent of the recent taxes the Federal Government imposed on Nigerians.
The most recent one is called cybersecurity levy. According to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), all money deposit banks, mobile money operators and payment service providers will soon begin to deduct 0.5 per cent on electronic transactions in line with Section 44 (2)(a) of the Cybercrimes (Amendment) Act, 2024. The levy is to be remitted to the National Cybersecurity Fund (NCF) administered by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA).
By Casmir Igbokwe
Former Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose’s brother trended on the social media recently. The outrageous amount of money he pays as electricity tariff every week was the crux of the matter. Some Nigerians apparently thought he was joking in the video where he claimed his weekly electricity bill was N100,000. And this is for three rooms. He said he used to spend this N100,000 in one month.
Fayose is not alone. All electricity consumers on Band A category are feeling the same pinch. Simply put, what they used to spend on electricity in one month is now spent in one week. What happened was that the Federal Government increased electricity tariff for these Band A customers on April 3, 2024. From N68 per kilowatt-hour, the tariff went up to N225 per kWh, an increase of over 200 per cent. These B and A customers reportedly have electricity at least 20 hours in a day. Customers on Band B, C, D and E do not have to worry about the increase in tariff for now as they are not affected in this pilot phase. The plan is to co-opt them into the tariff-hike prison within a period of three years.
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.
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.
By Casmir Igbokwe
The majority of Nigerians are in agreement that President Bola Tinubu made a fantastic speech at the 78th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York last week. Some sound bites from his speech made many Nigerians proud and projected his speech writer as a candidate eminently qualified for promotion.
Like a motivational speaker, our President intoned, “To keep faith with the tenets of this world body and the theme of this year’s Assembly, the poverty of nations must end. The pillage of one nation’s resources by the overreach of firms and people of stronger nations must end. The will of the people must be respected…” Good talk, Mr. President!
By Casmir Igbokwe
As The he saying goes, when a man on top of a palm tree pollutes the air, the flies get confused. No doubt, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) polluted the air of our 2023 general election. Now that many confused Nigerians are wondering what happened, the chairman of the electoral umpire, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, has remained taciturn.
Ordinarily, Yakubu expresses his views frequently. But since he surreptitiously announced the result of the infamous February 25 presidential election in the ungodly hours of March 1, 2023, he has left the arena for some other stakeholders and observers.
I watched INEC’s spokesman, Mr. Festus Okoye, trying labouriously to explain the so-called “technical glitches” in the last presidential election in a recent interview on Channels Television. He acknowledged that the results of the National Assembly elections were uploaded seamlessly to the INEC portal.
By Casmir Igbokwe
The senior military officer looked with pity on some citizens marching enthusiastically to go and cast their votes. “You are wasting your time,” he said. It was in Lagos on the day of the presidential and National Assembly elections. When prodded, this officer alleged that a security report came shortly before the election, indicating who the powers that be wanted as President. This supposedly meant that the security men would have to cooperate to deliver the anointed one. I dismissed this information. But when President Muhammadu Buhari illegally raised his ballot paper to show that he voted for his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), I became suspicious.
It was then that what Reverend Father Emmanuel (surname withheld) told me five days to the election dawned on me. This priest said he was highly afraid the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, might not make it to Aso Rock. “The cabals are highly against him. I have been praying about this, but God can’t do for human beings what they can do for themselves,” he added. This was actually his reaction to my article titled, “Electing Nigeria’s miraculous President,” published on Monday, February 20, 2023.
