Does Nigeria Have A Living Conscience?

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Nigerians are very good at crowning false heroes. Just open a Nigerian newspaper you can find near you and see how many people that are recklessly described on its pages as “credible” politicians, “honest and selfless” Nigerians, or worse, the “conscience of the nation.” You would be shocked to see the number of people that carelessly allow themselves to be associated with such superb, ennobling qualities even when they are fully aware that by their personal conducts, it might even appear as a generous compliment to dress them up in the very opposites of those terms. 

*Chinua Achebe 

Over the years, these words and phrases have been so callously and horribly subjected to the worst kinds of abuses in Nigeria with hardly anyone making any attempt to intervene and seek their redemption. I won’t in the least, therefore, be surprised to wake up tomorrow and hear that decent people in this country have begun to protest and resist any attempt to associate them with such grossly debased terms.

Bola Tinubu’s ‘Teamship’ Doctrine Is A Scam!

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

“Let me demonstrate here one of those philosophies, doctrines that I believe firmly in – teamship – unbreakable team. To demonstrate that, I will choose the first question and assign to Dele Alake and the second question assign to Nasir el-Rufai and the third question assign to Ben Ayade.”

*Tinubu 

Those were the words of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the 2023 elections, at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London known as Chatham House on Monday, December 5. In the spirit of Tinubu’s teamship, questions posed to him directly following a paper he presented at the think-tank were farmed out by fiat to surrogates.

Reactions, expectedly, were fast and furious. While well-meaning Nigerians termed, correctly, his “teamship” doctrine an abdication, the APC spin doctors went on overdrive. Alake, former Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Director of Strategic Communications of the APC presidential campaign council, said delegating questions to team members is one of Tinubu’s innovations.

Tinubu And The Certificate Scandal That Refuses To Die

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

IF there is anything that the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, would want to die down at this critical moment, it is the certificate scandal that has dogged his political career for more than two decades. Though he survived the scandal when it first reared its ugly head in 1999 even as the then Speaker of the House of Representatives, Salisu Buhari, accused of the same scam, lost his plum office, it has refused to go away.

*Tinubu 

Tinubu survived the scandal then because the same gladiators who forced Buhari to resign on July 22, 1999, exactly 49 days after he clinched the coveted seat of the House of Representatives Speaker, turned around to save his neck from the political guillotine. 

And what was the case against Tinubu? 

Like Salisu Buhari who claimed to have attended University of Toronto in Canada and graduated with a degree in Business Administration, when he did not, shortly after he was sworn in as governor of Lagos State on May 29, 1999, there were allegations that Tinubu had perjured and forged the credentials that qualified him to run for the governorship election.

The allegations were contained in a petition dated August 12, 1999, written by Alhaji Jameed Seriki and Dr. Waliu Balogun-Smith. They alleged a discrepancy in Tinubu’s age since the profile published during his inauguration stated that he was born in 1952 and the age on his transcript at the Chicago State University claimed that he was born in 1954.

State Judicial Panels Can Indict Military And Police Officers

 By Femi Falana

As a sequel to the #EndSARS protests last year, the National Economic Council advised all State Governments to institute judicial commissions of Enquiry to probe allegations of police brutality in the country. Based on the advice the Federal Government and 28 State Governors set up judicial commissions of inquiry to probe sundry allegations of police brutality under the applicable Tribunal of Inquiry Laws. However, a few lawyers deliberately set out to obfuscate the issues in a desperate attempt to cover up the massacre of unarmed protesters in Lagos, Rivers, Edo, Oyo and the Federal Capital Territory.

*Falana 

Notwithstanding that some of the lawyers had previously appeared in panels of enquiry set up by State Governors they turned round to question the constitutionality of the judicial commissions, albeit on a very shaky legal wicket. I was compelled to intervene by clarifying the state of the law on the unquestionable validity of the powers of the President and State Governors to institute administrative or judicial commissions of inquiry within their areas of jurisdictional competence under the current political dispensation. Thereafter, the Panels which had been set up by the State Governors commenced public sittings.

June 12 Without Democratic Reforms

 By Dan Amor

Whatever one’s reservation about it, the recognition of June 12 as the authentic Democracy Day in Nigeria, and honour for Chief MKO Abiola with the title of Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR), specifically reserved for presidents and heads of State, is a most salutary development since 2018. For that singular act of magnanimity and statesmanship, President Muhammadu Buhari merits my commendation.

*Abiola 

 On June 12, 1993, Nigeria held a presidential election, which was annulled by the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida. It was presumed to have been won by the late Chief MKO Abiola, who was the flag bearer of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), one of the two political parties decreed into existence by the military. Goaded by pro-democracy organizations and activists such as the National Democratic Coalition, Abiola went out of his way to challenge the annulment of the election considered to be the freest and fairest in the history of the country. 

Dele Giwa: Lingering Echoes Of A Murder

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

 “Death is…the absence of presence…the endless time of never coming back…a gap you can’t see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound”.    – Tom Stopard, German playwright. 

*Giwa 

 

In the morning of Monday, October 20, 1986, I was preparing to go to work when a major item on the Anambra Broadcasting Service (ABS) 6.30 news bulletin hit me like a hard object. Mr. Dele Giwa, the founding editor-in-chief of Newswatch magazine, had the previous day been killed and shattered by a letter bomb in his Lagos home. My scream was so loud that my neighbour barged into my room to inquire what it was that could have made me to let out such an ear-splitting bellow. 

We were three young men who had a couple of months earlier been posted from Enugu to Abakaliki to work in the old Anambra State public service, and we had hired a flat in a newly erected two-storey building at the end of Water Works Road, which we shared. My flat-mate, clearly, was not familiar with Giwa’s name and work, and so had wondered why his death could elicit such a reaction from me. But later that day, as he interacted with people, he realised that Giwa’s death was such big news, and by the next couple of days, he had become an expert on Giwa and his truncated life and career. Across the country, Giwa’s brutal death dominated the news not just because of the pride of place he occupied in Nigerian journalism practice and but more because of the totally novel way his killers had chosen to end his life.

Alex Ekwueme: The Architect Who Made A Difference

By Dare Babarinsa

Dr Alex Ekwueme occupied a unique space in Nigerian history. As the first elected Vice-President, Ekwueme was the face Nigeria advertised to the world that indeed the Igbos were back into the mainstream of Nigerian politics after the gruesome Civil War that ended in 1970. After that war, he made more money and decided to show the way to other Igbos who had come into wealth. By the time he was made the Vice-President to Alhaji Shehu Shagari, his philanthropy was well known. He single-handedly built the vocational centre, in Oko, his home town which has now been turned into The Federal Polytechnics, Oko. He was highly educated and knew the language of money. In the cacophony of the old National Party of Nigeria, NPN, during the Second Republic, his was a Voice of Reason. Now the voice is stilled.

*Dr. Alex Ekwueme

When Ekwueme died Sunday, November 19 in London, it was at the end of a long farewell. When I met him in his country home in Oko, Anambra State, in 1986, it was for him, the beginning of a new life. In July 1986, my editors at Newswatch, sent me to Oko with the good news that Ekwueme, who had been in Ikoyi Prison since Shagari was toppled on December 31, 1986, would soon be freed. I broke the good news to his mother, Mama Agnes and his younger wife, Ifeoma. Everyone was ecstatic. I met the late Igwe Justus Ekwueme, the traditional ruler of the town who welcomed me with open arms. Few weeks later, Ekwueme rode to Oko in triumph. I was one of the hundreds of people who joined him and his family at the thanksgiving service in the Anglican Church in the town.