Showing posts with label Chris Gyang. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chris Gyang. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 3, 2022

A Captive President, Blighted Country, Docile People

 By Chris Gyang

Those Nigerians who once thought that the Buhari presidency would take our country to a destination better than this forlorn outpost of stasis, anarchy and overwhelming misery now know better. They are shaking their heads in utter regret, and sheer bewilderment.

*Buhari 

When we warned, even as early as the days before the 2015 presidential vote, that Buhari’s rabid sectionalism and extreme religious proclivities would push Nigeria to a sad precipice, we were excoriated and branded as hateful and irrational peddlers of Islamophobia. But those who pointed accusing fingers at us then are now also crying, painfully – victims of Islamist terrorism, Fulani herdsmen’s terrorism and expansionism, armed banditry, kidnapping for hefty pay-offs and sundry criminalities that have become the chief themes of Buhari’s reign so far.

But, lest we forget, this is the man whom Boko Haram once penciled down as their spokesman before he became president – based on his strident support for them (once upon a time?) This is a president in whose cabinet a popular and self-confessed Al-Qaeda apologist snugly perches – one of the president’s closest allies.

Wednesday, July 7, 2021

Suspicious ‘Hope’, Kanu’s Arrest, The North’s Duplicity

 By Chris Gyang

Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State is the typical Nigerian politician. With utmost dexterity, he has mastered the intrigues of survival in this most brutal and unconscionable trade. For instance, in 2018, Mr. Hope promptly dumped the PDP, his party since 1999 on which platform he served two Senate terms, and joined the ruling APC. 

*Kanu

He had realised that his prospects of becoming governor as an APC candidate were brighter than as that of the PDP. And, true to his reckoning, he later emerged as governor – even though it took a Supreme Court ruling to confirm his victory. Self-preservation and political survival is the name of the game. Apparently, Governor Hope had mastered it so well.

The day before the Nigerian government announced the arrest of Nnamdi Kanu, Governor Hope had advised his fellow Igbo people to support the Buhari-led Federal Government because, “After God in Nigeria, the next person is Buhari. He has the power to dictate where there should be light or not, and it happens.” The governor was widely condemned by Nigerians, some of whom dubbed his utterance as blasphemy for almost comparing Buhari to God.