Obasanjo And The Haunting Ghost Of His Third Term Agenda

 By Olu Fasan

Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s former military ruler and former civilian president, is a bundle of contradictions. One could write a book on Obasanjo’s strengths, and another on his flaws. Of course, Obasanjo is his own hagiographer. He has written many books on himself, with such self-referential titles as My Command, Not My Will and My Watch. But as the biographer Lytton Strachey said, discretion is not the better part of biography. And so, most of Obasanjo’s books are an exercise in self-glorification, with highly disputed narratives. 

For instance, Obasanjo’s My Command, an account of his role during the civil war, was so controversial that it provoked General Godwin Alabi-Isama to write his own book, The Tragedy of Victory, to correct what he described as “Obasanjo’s Tissues of Lies”.

Slavery Is Not An Option

 By Pat Utomi

Beginning from age 17 as an undergraduate at the University of Nigeria I have rallied resistance against injustice.

My early cry for doing things right peaked with my calling out students at UNN to protest police killing of University of Ibadan Student, Kunle. Given the emotions of the times when UNN students lost three years as they watched friends and family die like chicken while UI students were in class during the Civil war was a hard sell. But we joined forces with Bassey Ekpo Bassey and founded the Students Democratic Society because we prized human solidarity.

Alex Ekwueme Would Have Been 90

By Ejike Anyaduba

Five years ago, almost to this day, the vacuum created by the death of Dr. Alex Ifeanyichukwu Ekwueme in the nation’s political life is yet to be filled. It is hardly to be imagined how low Nigerian democracy has been running, and to what weakness its riders have been reduced through avoidable crises. And it looks like there are no statesmen in the mould of Ekwueme to steer the ship ashore.

*Ekwueme 

Until the military’s convoluted transition to civil rule which ended in fiasco on June 12, 1993, Ekwueme, Nigeria’s Vice President between 1979 and 1983, was almost in the background, never quite in focus. But he would be stirred to action the moment it was clear that the General Sani Abacha’s transition to civil rule was a ruse – a winding path that was leading nowhere.

Nigeria, Xenophobia and Afrocentricism

By DAN AMOR

In 2005, a new diplomatic law was introduced in South Africa which compelled travelers from Nigeria and a few other countries, to meet certain transit visa requirements before stepping into that country. Those other countries include Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Bangladesh and Sierra Leone. Other countries affected by the law were India, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Somalia, China, Russia, Ukraine, Pakistan and Kenya. Principally, the anti-visitor law was targeting Nigeria. This shows that xenophobia is an official state policy of the South African government. There is indeed nothing wrong with the idea of an independent country choosing who her visitors should be and who should not.

Yet, it is not only a diplomatic shortsightedness but also a demonstration of chronic ingratitude for South Africa not to recognize her benefactors. It also shows, to a large extent, the limpid docility in the mindset of those at the commanding height of that country's diplomacy.